


Charybdis

by Diomedes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A eulogy for the Avengers, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Bruce Banner Feels, Character Study, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not A Fix-It, Porn with Feelings, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Team Feels, Thor Feels (Marvel), Tony Stark Feels, Tragedy, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diomedes/pseuds/Diomedes
Summary: Remember all those fluffy OT6 the-Avengers-live-in-the-Tower fics?Let's start there and end in Endgame.They were never meant to be: the six of them who birthed the Avengers, the six of them who failed the universe.--------------------
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner/Clint Barton/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark/Thor, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Avengers Team, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 46
Kudos: 85





	1. Dead Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**dead run:** when the wind is directly aft a sailing vessel's intended motion_

Conventional wisdom holds the Avengers _become_ sometime in New York the week of the Chitauri attack.

Pinpointing the exact moment is trickier. Thor would say he saw the spark from the off; when he fought a man in armour and a man without in the Black Forest of Germany. For Bruce it’d be when Fury dragged them all in for a roundtable and they sized each other up only to find each other wanting. Steve would insist that they came together that very first time they were forced into teamwork as a Helicarrier fell in the sky. For Tony the catalyst was the simple tragedy of a near-nameless agent’s death.

There's an argument to be made the team only becomes a _T_ _eam_ during the Battle of New York when Clint finally joins them, completing the circle; when Bruce comes back to fight when escape is easier; and at Steve’s first order that commands a god. In brutal fashion maybe they’re only _Them_ in that singular moment of victory and sacrifice when Tony takes a nuke through a wormhole and those left behind can only wonder at what they might have had.

Only Natasha knows the truth: the Avengers only begin in the End, in the After, when six exhausted strangers eat shawarma in a Lebanese diner surrounded by ruins.

(Eleven years from now as she falls off a cliff she’ll remember how the ash seemed to float down like snowflakes - )

The truth is it doesn’t really matter how the Avengers start, it’s all prelude to the breakdown.

* * *

They’ll blame Stark for the first.

And it is Tony’s fault; that first Night at least. He’s the Avengers’ prime mover and so he suggests that first step down the garden path to damnation. The six of them are in the Tower after their third mission. It had gone like clockwork, like dancing, and no one had put a foot wrong. Even Fury’s debrief was short and damn near complimentary. They won. It was easy. Clear-cut and righteous. A moment of moral clarity before the grey comes creeping in.

They’re all in the living room, liquor flowing. They’re high on success and their own potential: the ease with which they cooperate in the field spilling momentarily over into reality. Only Clint and Stark are truly drunk but everyone is riding the endorphin rush before the inevitable crash. Thor is boisterously recounting old Asgardian stories, Clint is smiling his real smile, Stark’s good mood means his wit is charming instead of cutting. Even Banner is loosening under the soft lights and easy touches. Rogers stands apart but his expression is wistful and hopeful in equal measures.

The afterglow is affecting Natasha too. There’s a buzz under her skin unrelated to alcohol; leftover adrenaline fizzling away without an outlet. She’s flush with the warm rush of expensive vodka and Clint’s happiness. They were beautiful today - deadly and precise, each of them an essential component in a well-oiled machine. More than beautiful - they were _Good,_ and Natasha knows the difference. She has always been beautiful, she has not always been kind.

Night falls without any of them noticing and the adrenaline starts to dry up, leaving them all shaky and vulnerable. That’s their cue to split up to deal with the remaining fallout alone. Rogers will go down to the gym to try and drain seven decades of ice out of his veins. Clint will head off to the range to practice until his fingers bleed because he is a man among Supermen knows it. Thor will fly off somewhere to call down the heavens and none of them can even imagine what having that sort of power must be like. Banner will retreat to meditate, re-establishing his uneasy truce with his other half so none of them suspect how close he lives to the edge every day. Stark will make it all the way to his penthouse before he drinks himself past drunk and into oblivion.

Only after they’ve all dispersed to lick their private wounds will Natasha let herself relax. The team is her mission. Fury assigned it to her. She can grease the wheels between the future and the past; between the alien and the human; between the monsters and men. Her job is to keep them together and she will fail just as spectacularly as everyone else. The Avengers will sink like a stone and they will take half the universe with them.

Tonight Stark breaks the pattern and like the worst of Tony's ideas this one will snowball until it ends in tragedy.

“Stay awhile.”

(It starts with Tony. It’ll end with Tony.)

The rest of them all freeze mid-motion at the unexpected request. It’s unclear who Stark’s asking. Everyone or anyone.

“What for?” Natasha prompts in the silence.

Stark doesn’t answer. He just keeps staring into the double measure of whisky in his glass like it contains the secrets of the universe. He’s tried the best and most expensive alcohol in the world and none of it quiets his fears. If his nightmares have no cure he’ll put them off for as long as possible.

Banner tries next. “Tony, you should - ”

Stark’s trance breaks. “Yeah, I’m not generally known for doing things I _should,_ Brucie-bear. In fact I have quite the reputation for doing the opposite. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Ibiza with - “

“We’ve heard it,” Rogers interrupts, cutting off whatever crude anecdote Stark had planned.

Stark just grunts, dark eyes alight and vaguely unfocused. “Well then Captain Courageous, want to help me break my record? There’s six of us, that’d do it. A six-some. Hex-some. Sex-some - depends on which linguistic root you choose. Point being, instead of destroying a punching bag or...” he squints at them, “...whatever the fuck the rest of you do, how about we see if my bed can handle a few more superheroes?” He leers, or tries to but the resulting grimace is a mockery.

Natasha knows well enough it’s not a serious offer. Conversing with Stark is like shadow-boxing: what is meant to be said is not really there. The proposition is simply a request for company buried under crass overcompensation.

No one told Steve.

Rogers jerks back like he’s been slapped and the movement causes Stark’s gaze to snap into focus, as if the rejection has suddenly make the chase real. “Not your style, El Capitaine?” He looks the soldier up and down. “Can’t say I won’t be disappointed.”

Rogers’s jaw clenches. He went from years of close quarters with the Commandos to this fledgling team in this fast-moving future. To hear Howard’s son propose _that_ as a team-bonding exercise is blasphemous because Steve is alone here. He will never get back what he had and he has to steel himself to keep from grabbing whatever he can to fill the hole left behind.

“You would hardly be the only one with regrets,” Thor agrees easily, gaze contemplating their Captain. Rogers blinks, thrown. Everyone knows Thor doesn’t quite have a handle on human conventions yet but everyone also underestimates the vastness of what he understands. And this, apparently, he understands.

Stark recovers first. “Right, so Mister Universe is in. Hawkguy? Jade Jaws? Red Death?”

“You can’t be serious,” Banner groans, exasperated but fond.

Stark's voice drops from manic to seductive with the flip of a switch and the words come out as a low purr. “Why not, Darling?”

Banner flusters under the heated gaze, unused to being the focal point of such intense attention.

Rogers’s voice comes out sharp from out of frame. “You know why, Stark.”

Stark’s gaze swings towards its new target. “First of all, I’m pretty sure between the alien prince, the assassin twins, the American ubermench, and yours truly, Bruce might actually be the least dangerous person here at the moment. And secondly,” for some odd reason Stark looks at Natasha, “you make it sound like the danger’s not a turn on. C’mon, I can’t be the only one here who appreciates a little afterburn.”

A frisson of energy makes its way down Natasha’s spine but she does not let it win. She just raises an eyebrow back. “Maybe I object to the company.”

 _“Ouch_. You wound me, Widow.”

Across from her Clint stretches like a cat and she knows he’s feeling the restlessness too. “Lay off, Stark, unless you’re gonna to put your money where your mouth is.”

“Well I’ve got a lot of money Birdie, and you _really_ don’t want to know where my mouth - “

That’s as far as Stark gets before Clint calls it. He moves faster than a drunk man should and he’s suddenly at Stark’s side pulling him in and planting a wet, sloppy kiss on Stark’s cheek.

(They’ll blame Stark later but really it’s Clint’s fault. He’s the one who transforms the idea into action; takes the hypothetical into the real and makes first contact.)

A few seconds pass before Stark remembers that _he’s_ supposed to be the shameless one here and turns his head to make the kiss real. Joke’s on him: Clint is a man who brings a bow and arrow to a gun fight - ridiculously outmatched is what he _does_. They kiss with purpose, each unwilling to back off first but the display is undercut by the stray giggling in between as they stumble into each other. Clint’s elbow knocks Stark’s whiskey off the bar and no one except Natasha suspects it’s not an accident.

Stark can’t be bothered to care at the moment. “Oh shut up, Barton, I’m good at this.”

Stark tries to leverage his arm to get a better angle but Clint is stronger than he looks. Stark’s eyes barely have time to register surprise before Clint’s grip tightens and he surges on the offensive. Everyone underestimates Clint. No one expects him to be as strong as he is with his corny jokes and his outdated weapon. No one expects him to lie so well.

Everyone is openly staring now with varying degrees of interest and embarrassment. Thor looks intrigued, Banner averts his eyes. Rogers’s expression is - not disgusted, exactly - more like taken aback and Natasha has no idea who at SHIELD was tasked with preparing Captain America for the realities of this new century but she’s certain they didn’t account for drunken homoerotic exhibitionism. There is such a thing as _Too much, Too fast_ and Tony Stark may well be the very definition of it.

“You two want to take this somewhere private?” she asks, pitying the soldier. She knows Stark and Clint will burn themselves out and sure enough they simply fall over themselves and onto the sofa. Both of them are sniggering now, happy and warm in a tangle of limbs next to Thor.

Thor’s hand is heavy where is comes down to rest on Clint’s bicep. “Would a third go amiss?”

“ _Holy shit_ ,” is all Clint manages before Thor leans over to kiss him.

Everyone else holds their breath as if waiting for someone to chime in and inform Thor that whatever Asgard gets up to after hours, Fury definitely didn’t sanction _this_.

(So really it’s Thor’s fault that the game expands. Two is a contest, three is a party.)

Thor kisses softer than Stark and Natasha will always remember that. Off to the side she sees Rogers swallow. She’s not as unaffected as she appears to be either. The alcohol is coursing pleasantly through her veins and she feels each beat of her heart carry the heat through her. Her exhilaration is partly lust, partly fear. The fluttering in her stomach is a warning: _back away while you still can_. 

To her left Stark exhales roughly. “Wow, I can’t even be mad about that.”

Thor’s answering rumble is low and smooth. “Wait your turn, Anthony.”

Stark snorts at the admonishment as Clint catches her eye, lips twitching. His expression reminds her of the days before he was haunted when he’d launch himself off tall buildings, trusting himself to a thin steel thread. Clint has never been afraid of heights or of the fall, there’s too much circus in his blood. Vormir will change that but it is still more than a decade away. For now Clint dares.

He reaches back to grab Stark. “Tag, you’re in. Enjoy the Royal treatment.”

“Oh, I plan to.” Stark ends up in Thor’s lap after an inelegant bit of maneuvering and Thor’s golden head leans down to make good on his promise.

It’s unnaturally quiet when Stark’s mouth is too occupied to fill the silence. The background music fades and then restarts, picking up a new rhythm staggeringly similar to the beat of Natasha’s pulse in her ears. Her eyes slide sideways away from the sofa to Banner. For a man who houses a monster he seems oddly small in the armchair. He looks distinctly uncomfortable. He’s curled as far away from the sofa as he can, an action belied by his rapt attention. He’s watching Thor and Stark as if mesmerized. Natasha recognizes yearning, or at least the closest to it a man so used to solitude can feel. She watches him swallow down his greed and lust and jealousy with a grace the saints would envy.

She feels the unsolicited urge to save him from his piety.

 _(Thank you_ , Bruce will say later on one of their long walks because it was Natasha who pulled him out of India and onto this team.)

(She’ll wonder years later - after everything’s fallen apart - if he blames her for the same.)

Stark lets out a quiet whine and that seems to be the breaking point. Banner’s gaze shifts abruptly and his knuckles go white on the arms of the chair. It’s not the Hulk, it’s the awful realization of how apart from them he will always be. So he gathers himself and slips unobtrusively towards the door. Bruce has spent years perfecting the art of the escape; leaving before things got too messy, before something broke. He would rather mourn what might have been than deal with the grief of leaving something behind.

He looks back only once but a single mistake is all it takes.

“Stay,” Natasha whispers, low enough only he can hear. She doesn’t know which of them is more surprised by her request. She only knows the team needs him. His balance, his kindness, his anger, his determination.

(They do. Once Bruce leaves they fall apart spectacularly.)

Banner’s voice is the barest whisper but it still seems to drown out the laughter behind them. “Steve’s right. I can’t... The risk isn’t worth it.”

They aren’t talking about the Other Guy. Banner craves friendship, companionship, understanding. He wants to belong and that is just as dangerous as losing his temper because what happens when the Avengers break? _When_ , not _if_. Bruce was the first to see their capacity for destruction: six volatile chemicals just waiting for the right trigger. Natasha and Tony may be the cynics but Bruce is a true pessimist. It has only made him kind.

Banner glances back once more before he shakes his head ruefully, already letting them go.

“Stay,” Natasha tries again. It takes the gentlest of breezes to push him over. “For a little while.”

Banner swallows. “Alright.”

(True to his word Bruce will stay an Avenger, but only for a little while.)

(So really it’s Bruce’s fault. He saw the danger clearest and joined them anyway.)

Natasha inspects him closely and unlike the others he doesn’t flinch back from her gaze. His eyes are brown, no hint of green, his shirt is a size too large and grey. The damp from the shower has made his hair curl. They’ve all seen him naked after missions but only here and now does he seem vulnerable. He looks so human because at the end of all things he is. She kisses him chastely on the cheek where his two beers have flushed him. He doesn’t touch her back but his smile is small and pleased. It’s endearing.

“’Bout time.” Stark grins triumphantly before he flops closer to them. “You can’t leave me alone with these heathens, Bruce, I’m pretty sure Romanoff will kill me.” His eyes rake over her. “But man, what a death.”

“I don’t think you could handle me, Mr. Stark.”

His answering smirk begs to be taken down a peg. “I’ll take that bet.” Cocky as ever.

In a flash Natasha’s on him, pinning him to the couch. She hears a sudden intake of breath from Banner but Stark doesn’t fight her. Her thighs slot tightly around his hips, his wrists immobilized at his sides. Her smile is predatory as he relaxes under her grip.

Stark - the bastard - isn’t easily impressed. He winks. “I should warn you I’m ticklish.”

She leans down to whisper in his ear. “I know.”

Stark’s answer is a rumbling laugh because he knows the score too. Sex isn’t meaningful intimacy on its own. It’s currency, a past-time, theatre. He is an actor, she is a spy: the difference exists in the consequences not the deception. She decides a show is in order and Stark is an experienced partner. She can feel Thor’s appreciative gaze on her even as Banner turns his head, a late-blooming blush threatening his collar. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the shadow in the corner freeze. Clint is the only one unaffected. He knows better.

She releases Stark’s wrists to rake her nails up his forearms and relishes his shiver. His freed hands encircle her hips, aligning them flush. She buries her right hand in his hair to keep him from surging up as she leans down excruciatingly slowly - drawing out the show. She’s unprepared for when he turns from her at the last second exposing his throat instead. Her lips nip lightly against the warm skin there and when Stark’s hand starts drifting up from her hip towards her breast she rewards him with a sharp tug to his hair and a graze of teeth. Stark’s breathing picks up immediately and she watches his pulse jump in his throat. This was going to be easier than she thought except -

It's not arousal, it's fear.

Her forgotten left hand is resting across Stark's T-shirt, blotting out the dim light of the arc reactor. Stark shifts abruptly and her hand slips from the hard casing. He covers the motion as casually as he can and when he catches her looking he cants his torso further away, shielding himself.

“Serves me right, really,” he babbles too quickly. The smile on his face is plastic hiding something brittle. “You win.”

Natasha always wins. Tony’s heart is too fragile a thing. He’s trusted the wrong people before and he will do so again.

(The Widow has betrayed him once before and she will do so again.)

“Score one for Nat!” Clint yelps from somewhere behind her.

There’s a frown on her face as she lets Stark escape, practically fleeing towards Bruce.

“Milady,” a deep voice intones from behind her. Thor stands regally before he bends slightly at the waist and offers her his hand. Thor is a warrior and a god but he was a Prince first. He was a brother second, and there will come a day when he is neither.

“Your Highness,” Natasha replies. Thor’s shirtless and glorious in his alien perfection but there are callouses on his palm from centuries with Mjolnir and that detail alone is more fascinating than any expanse of immortal skin. His kiss tastes like rain and if there exists gods made flesh then Natasha would prefer them like this.

The movement in her periphery is enough to remind her they aren’t complete.

“Steven?” Thor calls softly.

Anyone save a spy could have been forgiven for forgetting Rogers was even in the room. He’s made no sound but Natasha has watched his eyes track them all as he keeps to the perimeter, the coffee table a pitiful barrier between them. She sees his jaw clench when he’s called out and she mentally prepares the easy defence: a prank gone too far mixed with a couple of crossed wires and too many drinks. They’re not so far gone they can’t chalk it up to a mistake tomorrow.

“Thor’s abs have already ruined my self-esteem, might as well join in, Cap,” Clint calls at exactly the wrong moment. For good measure his own shirt joins Thor’s on the ground.

Rogers remains on the precipice like a deer caught in headlights. The rest of them are all staring now and that’s not making it better. Steve is as still as a statue, every muscle locked like the slightest bit of give would cause him to shatter. He peers into each of their faces and Natasha doesn’t know what he hopes to find there. If he sees Margaret Carter in her the way he yearns to see Howard in Tony. If all this team does is remind him of what he no longer has.

(Therein lies the irony: that Steve pines for the past until the present is taken from him - until _now_ becomes _then_ and it’s too late to get it back.)

Rogers’s blue eyes meet hers and there’s something still frozen in them: a chip of ice that five months in this new century hasn’t yet defrosted. She slides away from Thor and extends her hand in wordless invitation. It is not the first time she will ask him to trust her. It will not be the last. Rogers just stares at her open palm like she’s the executioner ready to lead him up the scaffold. If he chooses this - chooses _them_ \- then he’s has to accept what they are and for all Steve’s bravery such a leap requires a different kind of courage. 

“In or out, Cap. You want to stay and watch I won’t charge you but I’m not getting blamed when you decide you can’t handle it tomorrow.”

Stark’s voice is too sober, too harsh, too cutting. It’s neither careful nor kind but it bypasses all of Rogers’s contemplative nostalgia and instead smashes that button in him that hates to be told what he can’t handle. He scowls at Stark, judgment pouring off him in waves. Stark does nothing more than smile that insufferable smile that has made several people dedicate their lives to ending his and will induce several more to the same.

Steve takes a single step forward, uncertainty replaced with ruthless determination. “That how you made your money, Stark?”

“Could have made a pretty penny in my twenties. Why, interested?”

Rogers looms over him, jaw clenched. There's a drawn out silence as they teeter on the edge. 

“I don’t know if you’re _worth_ it.”

Stark sneers and there's a flash of snarling teeth before he has a hand on the back of Rogers’s neck, pulling him in. The kiss is nothing more than a clash of wills. Stark doesn’t give an inch and he never will. Eventually Tony will yield bit by bit around the others but never to Rogers. Steve will resent that for the entirety of their relationship and in the end it'll be what he misses the most.

(So really it’s Steve’s fault. He’s the last domino. He takes them over the edge and off the cliff and no force in the universe can bring them back. Not even a gauntlet of infinite power and the snap of fingers.)

The kiss mellows into something less antagonistic but passionate just the same. Thor claps. Bruce lets out a shaky breath. Natasha just leans her head back against Clint’s bare shoulder and closes her eyes. She can hear the low thrumming of music: a tune she doesn’t recognize but with a strangely familiar rhythm. Overlaid on top she can hear Thor’s deep baritone and Stark’s rapid staccato, Bruce’s dulcet murmur, Rogers’s soft bass. Clint is utterly silent but the warmth of him at her side is enough.

“Well?” Clint asks, too low for the others to hear. He’s close enough she can smell the beer on his breath and the salt in his hair. Clint Barton is her very own patron saint: full-time smartass, part-time juggler, occasional distributor of undeserved second chances.

(Clint is the first Avenger she considers her friend. He’s the first true companion she ever had and he will be hers to the violent, violet end.)

Natasha opens her eyes and the sight that greets her is tempting. She feels the liquid fire in her body pool lower. Against her side Clint’s heartbeat is steady and clear. He’s still waiting for her call. She can abort this whole disaster with a word. Even if everything in him wants this he trusts her judgment first. She can feel it too: the inexorable pull between all of them. Call it _Destiny_ , or _purpose_ , or that most dangerous of sentiments: _Hope_. The Avengers could be Good. They could be better than good - they could be _hers_.

All it takes is a leap of faith.

_(Oh but it’s the fall that kills you.)_

So it’s Natasha’s fault in the end. She makes the call, gives her blessing, and the buck stops with her. Tomorrow she’ll blame the alcohol and the temporary madness of victory. Later she’ll blame Clint’s recklessness and Tony’s dares, Bruce’s grace, Thor’s imperfection, Steve’s surrender. It’s only at the end in an empty Compound that she’ll realize she only has herself to blame: the part of her that _wanted_ was simply greater than the part of her that _feared_.

After tonight the Avengers are inextricable. The bonds between them cement too tightly and they’ll spend the next decade tearing apart, forever at each other’s mercy. None of them will ever be free again.

That first Night is like the Battle of New York all over again. The six of them slot together as easily as they do in the field. It feels like confirmation of fate, like it was meant-to-be. Only later will it become apparent that sex and fighting are the only things they do beautifully together. Violence and flesh are the only parts of each other they understand and they will be undone by the gaps in between.

Those seeds of ruination already exist here and now: in the barest indent on Clint’s ring finger that no one notices, in the way Tony dives into distraction to avoid revealing his fears. Bruce’s doubts manifest in the way he still holds himself apart even as the rest of them descend in a messy tangle of limbs. Thor’s skin tastes only mostly human and it only emphasizes the differences between them. Steve wishes for a split-second that he could trade this for a piece of his past back unaware that four years from now he will. Natasha already holds too many secrets and they will rot her team from the inside out.

But for now it’s all buried under the pleasure and the rush. It’s effortless. Falling always is.

None of them actually make it to Stark’s bed. Sated and sticky they all simply fall asleep draped over sofas and loveseats, pinned under heavy, slack bodies in uncomfortable positions. They’ll sort out sore muscles and bruises tomorrow. Natasha doesn’t sleep. She lies among them, awake and pretending, illuminated solely by the yellowish glow of the New York skyline shining through the windows. The view of the city at night is magnificent but she thinks the view inside might be better.

The peace doesn’t last. Peace never does.

Stark doesn’t make it through the night. Natasha watches him toss and turn for an hour before he wakes without a sound, light reflecting off wide pupils. He sits bolt upright, bathed in the blue light of the arc reactor. The rest of the team’s sleeping bodies are scattered around him. Dead to the world. Dead in his dreams. Tonight is the first night Tony doesn’t dream of a monster from beyond the stars - tonight is the first night he dreams the monster is _him -  
_

Stark leaves without a backwards glance, padding softly away. Natasha can hear the smooth mechanical ratchet of the elevator as it takes him somewhere none of them dare follow.

(Tony will always leave first except that very last time when Natasha will beat him to it.)

Rogers wakes with the sun. He’s wedged between Banner and the arm of the couch but instead of extricating himself he stays where he is. His gaze lingers on each of them in turn, a slight frown appearing when he realizes Stark is missing. There’s only a handful more golden minutes of reprieve before Clint wakes blaming Stark for his hangover and Thor wakes hungry. Banner is the last to rise, awkwardly nodding at her as he makes his escape; quickly and quietly removing all evidence he was ever there. Only once Clint has dragged himself to the shower and Thor heads to the kitchen does Natasha turn to leave.

“What was that?” Rogers asks softly, ashamed of his own confusion.

She shrugs, the gesture obscuring the fact she does not know. She suspects the answer is some mix of desperation, affinity, adrenaline, and alcohol. It could be the beginning of something wonderful. Natasha is wary but even she sees the potential.

The truth is this isn’t the start. The beginning she craves has already passed them by: the good times gone before they’ve really begun.

This is the high point: what comes next is their long, drawn out end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to make this as canon-compliant with onscreen events as possible while maintaining the premise. I have no idea why I thought this was a good plot idea to follow but it's the 2nd of 3 stories I told myself I'd finish this year. 
> 
> I really love Natasha as a PoV character. 
> 
> Comments are welcome and appreciated.


	2. Broach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**broach:** an abrupt, involuntary change in a vessel's course_

She doesn’t expect Bruce.

Clint was the first of the Avengers Natasha considers a friend but Bruce Banner is the second. She doesn’t seek him out. He comes to her when he’s had enough of Stark’s noise and Thor’s exuberance. When he wants to be the Listened-to instead of the Listener. They go for long walks through the city - exploring a world that doesn’t know well enough to be afraid of them. He doesn’t mind that the topics she chooses are light or the lies she peppers in to smooth out the wrinkles. He understands what it is to need to pretend you are not the monster you sometimes are.

Bruce likes the Classics and the Red Room gave her The Odyssey, their concession to humanity. The story of a tired soldier and his crew on a long sea journey home. 

“It’s not supposed to be a tragedy,” Bruce says, “Odysseus makes it back.”

“He’s not the same man who left,” she argues.

Bruce smiles sadly. He has been without a home nearly as long as she and neither of them are the people they were. “It’d have been a tragedy if he was.”

The tragedy is this: No one else makes it back. All the other sailors drown.

* * *

That Night, as Clint has come to call it, may have solidified the Avengers into something _more_ but it does not make them better. The bad does not get left behind, it is simply woven into them. Case in point: Rogers and Stark. They get along fine until one of them treads too closely to an unmarked landmine or an offhand comment digs into a still-raw wound. In the field Iron Man and Captain America are nearly as perfect as her and Clint but off it Stark and Rogers chafe against each other constantly. Natasha would have thought with time and success they’d get over it/themselves/each other but they haven’t and they never really will.

Normally it’s not a problem. Normally the Avengers don’t lose.

Their sixth mission is a victory in name only. Privately it’s a disaster and the alcohol in the Tower doesn’t erase the bad taste that lingers. Natasha has a broken arm and gets off rather lightly. Clint is exhausted and trying not to show it. Thor has decades more experience than any of them but today his ability to bounce back to normal only comes off as callous. Bruce is twitchy instead of mellow, the rage within him still sharp even after the Other Guy has had his fill. Stark is drinking like whiskey is water and he never escaped that desert. Rogers is sober against his will and ready to push his advantage. The two of them aren’t arguing yet. Stark’s just slowly tossing out snide comments to see who will break first. The rest of the room knows it’s going to be Rogers.

Stark lines four shots up on the bar and instead of handing them out he downs them one after the other without so much as a breath in between. One for each of the dead: gone in a flash like their lives. Rogers grimaces at the lack of self-control, his fingernails leaving dents in the arms of the chair. (They nearly lost Natasha today, _he_ nearly lost Natasha today.)

Steve failed at protecting his team, Tony failed at protecting the innocent. Funny then, how they manage to make each other the problem instead.

“Something on your mind, Cap?” Stark smirks lewdly when he catches Rogers glare.

It’s the first time Steve and Tony have actually addressed each other since the mission. Nothing good can come of it. Alcohol and time is just fuel on the fire.

Rogers’s breaths are regimented: in and out. “You were out of position. You left Romanoff exposed.”

So that’s how it’s going to be. From across the room Clint raises an eyebrow at her. It probably wouldn’t have mattered but Steve has the finest tactical mind of his generation with neither the ability to get drunk nor forget.

Thankfully Thor can still surprise them with the depth of his diplomacy. “What has happened is in the past, Steven. The Widow is fine, Barton got there in time.”

There’s an awful grin on Stark’s face. “Hear that Capcicle? Everybody’s fine.” _Except for the dead._ “Eat, drink, and be merry. If you can manage that.”

“Everybody’s _not_ fine,” Rogers corrects, righteous anger gathering momentum like a runaway train, “Natasha has a broken arm or did you not notice?”

“How could I? I was slightly to the left of where you wanted me to be.”

The tension ratchets up. They’re all frogs in slowly boiling water and Steve and Tony are taking turns stoking the fire. The room is a heady mix of exhaustion, testosterone, guilt, and adrenaline that is conducive to nothing productive. Only Thor seems immune and Natasha wonders if banquets in Asgard are simply filled with enough warriors and regret that such conflicts are mundane.

Stark saunters toward Rogers with an exaggerated swagger and plants himself inside Rogers’s carefully curated personal bubble, a deliberate provocation. “This where you’d prefer me to be, Cap?”

Rogers explodes like a grenade. He shoves Stark back and the latter lets out a laugh as his head knocks back into the wall. Steve is shaking with the effort it takes to restrain himself from leaving bruises but Tony has never known what is good for him. He kisses Steve instead. It's mostly teeth but when Rogers pulls Stark closer instead of shoving him off, the rest of them let out a collective breath. That’s the direction the night is pivoting then. Thor tries to hide his approving smile and Natasha lets the tension unwind from her shoulders. Bruce huffs in relief, glad not to have to play peacemaker. Clint wolf whistles loudly.

Stark is smirking like the game is won and that’s a rookie mistake. Rogers isn't out yet. (Tony will constantly underestimate Steve’s sucker punch until Siberia knocks something loose forever.)

“Knew you had it in you, Iceman.”

Rogers grits his teeth. “Stop talking.”

Stark giggles, breathless. “Does anyone else ever notice you’re full of shit?”

Rogers pins him flush to the wall and Tony laughs in victory. He wouldn't if he could see Cap's face.

Steve’s voice is low and rough when he goes in for the kill. “Like you noticed the four civilians in the car?”

(Four dead. They let four people die. _Mother, father, daughter, baby._ Gone in a flash - )

Natasha never learns if Steve means to break Tony the way he does or if he truly believes Stark’s forgotten. Stark’s expression goes from confused to broken to furious in an instant. He tries to shove Rogers away from him but the Captain is planted like a stone wall, arms barricading Stark’s exits in a parody of a lover’s embrace.

Steve rips into Tony but all of them flinch. “Because those people are _dead_ and **you** were no where to be found! You can't be counted on to be where you're supposed to be and a family _died_ while you - "

Stark surges forward and the weight of Cap's forearm against the arc reactor is enough. Stark calls a gauntlet, the metal encasing his hand, terawatt repulsor spinning up.

The night pivots again.

Thor is quickest and yes, he’s had experience with such a turn of events, he’s lived a long time. He pulls Rogers back before anyone can do serious damage.

“Stop this.” Thor’s voice brooks no argument and for all Steve’s stubbornness he’s not nearly foolish enough to fight a god.

Clint is only human and has the harder job of restraining Stark.

“Fuck you, Cap! They were closest to _you!_ ”

“I was covering for Barton because _you_ were out of position - ”

“Hey!” Bruce yells and that happens rarely enough that it gets everyone’s attention. “I don’t feel great. Let’s not invite a different houseguest to the party, okay?”

For a moment it looks like Rogers might actually decide that this is a lesson that should be taught with the Hulk. Natasha steps in before he has a chance to choose poorly. She nods at Bruce. “Take Stark upstairs. Keep him there.” She can hear Tony scoffing. “He’s had two gin and tonics in the last thirty minutes and four shots in the last ten. He shouldn’t be mixing any of that with the painkillers he’s taken. Shove him in front of a toilet.”

“You underestimate me, Ms. Romanoff,” Stark mutters.

“I didn’t think that was possible at this point,” she replies coldly.

Bruce is touching Stark placatingly. “Come on, Tony.”

Stark’s voice takes on a desperate pitch. “I didn’t - “

“I know,” Bruce says quietly. “Even if they don’t, I do. You tried, I noticed.” Natasha chose well, Bruce knows exactly what to say. Stark surrenders, leaning slowly into the other man’s shoulder and letting himself be led. Bruce never loses. He’s the strongest one there is. “JARVIS, we’re coming up. Run a shower.”

The two of them leave and Rogers holds himself stiffly at attention, his eyes snapping momentarily over Thor’s left shoulder to glare at what Natasha can only hope are the closing elevator doors. He doesn’t try anything. The Lord of Thunder will not be moved before he’s ready.

“Eyes down here, Soldier,” Natasha orders.

Rogers obeys the command instinctively and his jaw tics in frustration once he’s realized it. “You shouldn’t have been left exposed.”

“Well there shouldn’t have been vampires in San Fran,” Clint interjects, drifting into her periphery. “Life sucks. Or rather vampires _suck._ ”

Rogers ignores him. He steels himself to look at her. “Stark shouldn’t have left you exposed but I shouldn’t have put you there in the first place. It won’t happen again.”

“It might,” she equivocates. Rogers's guilt is easy enough to see leaking out from underneath anger.

He swallows and his voice comes out wrecked. “I’m sorry.”

He’s still standing at attention as if awaiting judgment but there is nothing to forgive. Natasha is a stranger to guilt and has seldom been the subject. It is not a belief the Red Room instilled in her or that SHIELD encouraged.

“Apology accepted,” Natasha grants because it costs her nothing. She's not dead. Not yet.

The tension leaves Steve’s shoulders all at once as he sags. It occurs to her that Rogers is the only one of them who has any real experience with having a team. Stark flew solo, as did Bruce. Her and Clint were a duet at best. Thor led armies. Only Rogers knows what it’s like to entrust your life to others and hold their lives in your hands in turn. To be an equal part of something larger than yourself. Maybe it’s the rest of them that have it wrong.

“That was the easy one, Cap. Good luck apologizing to Tony,” Clint says but his undertone is serious.

Rogers just stares down the corridor where Stark and Bruce have disappeared like he’s only now realizing the mountain he has to climb. He squares his torso anyway.

“Tomorrow, Steven,” Thor advises wisely.

Except one day everyone runs out of tomorrows and you are left with things unsaid.

* * *

After that a precedent is set: whenever the Avengers reach for each other Steve and Tony stick to opposite sides. It’s not obvious but it’s noticeable enough even the non-spies takes note. They work well enough together in the field and argue like cats and dogs off it but in bed they gloss over each other’s existence. They don’t fight and for that everyone is grateful enough not to mention they don’t even touch. Whatever the two of them do to sort themselves out happens later and without an audience. After a bad mission or an unwelcome anniversary or one of Those Nights there’s a two-day wait filled with sneering comments and bullish chastising until the tension between them finally snaps. How that happens isn’t a secret even if it occurs behind closed doors.

“So Cap, when are the rest of us gonna get to watch you set Tony straight?” Clint asks one morning once the black cloud between them has finally dissipated.

Stark saves Rogers from answering, smiling like a cat who’s gotten the cream. “ _Straight_ , Barton? Poor word choice, _bent_ is closer to the truth.”

“And let me guess, I can’t handle the truth?”

“Wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.” He winks and Clint snorts but every good lie has an element of truth. Perhaps the answer would offend Clint, or at least do little to ease his concern.

This is the part of Steve-and-Tony that they try to protect the rest of the team from. It’s what they have to do to beat their sharp edges so they fit into something functional for the next few weeks. It resets them to one hundred paces even if they’re still on a collision course.

Unlike Clint, Natasha knows better than to interrogate Stark when people are watching. She waits until three in the morning when he’s slunk down to the kitchen on the way to his workshop. He rarely makes it a solid eight hours unless Pepper is around and even then Natasha would bet he simply can’t bring himself to leave her the way he can an empty bed. He doesn’t see Natasha where she’s lying in wait as he pours himself a scotch, trying to judge exactly how much medicine he needs for oblivion to overtake dreams.

Stark is different in the dark. He seems smaller without an audience to play before or Rogers’s animosity to push against. A hollow man without banter to fill him up. Rip away Stark’s armour to get to what’s real and he will never forgive you. The only glimpses Natasha has are stolen.

“Stark.”

He startles. “Jesus! How long have you been there, Widow? Didn’t I build you a kitchen to lurk in somewhere else?“

“I like the whiskey down here,” she deadpans and Stark’s fingers curl protectively around his glass.

“Liar, I know you’re a vodka woman. Even Natalie thought my scotch collection sucked.” He rarely mentions their shared past and never without a bitter undercurrent.

She never apologized and doesn’t plan to. “Well it'd be hard to like it as much as you do.”

The admonishment only causes Stark to grip his tumbler tighter.

Scotch is nothing like vodka. Vodka is clean and clear and perfect. Scotch carries its history. Every year, every barrel, every bit of peat, every tendril of smoke. Its character is built layer upon layer and at the end you either have a masterpiece or a train wreck. But you’d do well to remember scotch and vodka are both poisons: they seduce and they kill and they ruin lives equally. Purveyors of death in different flavours.

Stark shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Caffeine dependence is hell.”

They both know the coffee is a side effect not the cause of his insomnia. She’s seen him toss and turn and wake in a cold sweat. If they were different people Tony might let slip the vision that keeps him up at night; the premonition of what’s Beyond the Stars. A burden shared is a burden halved but Stark doesn’t trust her. He did once and paid for it. So Stark swallows the confession down with the rest of his whiskey and Natasha lets him keep his secret.

(Tony could have been the third friend Natasha makes but he will end up being the last.)

Stark looks paper-thin. She can see the fear leaking out of his pores, paranoia colouring every update to their gear, every new suit. In the dim light she can just make out the bruises strategically littered across his arms in the shape of fingers. Marks that for all Tony's bravado he keeps hidden under long sleeves and tailored suits.

“Should I be worried?” Natasha asks.

“Never knew you to be,” he quips. “JARVIS won’t let me play with anything explosive while intoxicated, I’d say you were safe for tonight at least.”

“I meant you and Rogers.”

Stark’s smirk is a shallow echo of itself. “Jealous?”

(She isn’t. Not yet.)

Natasha nods towards the band of bruising around his wrist. “Should I be?”

Stark gives it his full consideration. “We could do worse.”

They will, in time. Once sex turns to secrets turns to violence. Natasha will choose a side and it won’t be Tony’s. At the moment it’s no skin off her nose if Stark chooses to punish himself with the same ruler his father always used. Nor does it matter if Rogers resents this future for everything it can never be again. Steve pivots toward the past and Tony lives too far in the future and Howard Stark is a shitty bridge. There’s not enough connective tissue, they’re standing too far apart shouting messages that get lost in the wind.

“Why are you up?” Tony asks abruptly, throwing her own question back at her.

Stark won’t believe her so Natasha is free to tell the truth. It feels like an extinct language on her tongue. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Tony just hums his disbelief. “I’m always alright.”

There is nothing more to say. They waste the hours until dawn in silence before Stark pulls on a different type of armour, covering scotch with several cups of coffee and bruises with silk shirtsleeves, ready to flit across the stage once more without a care in the world.

For now Natasha decides to let him. She is caught in the same illusion as the rest. She thinks they have time.

* * *

Those Nights only happen a handful of times but every one seems significant. Another contract binding the Avengers together, another nail in their eventual coffin. Whatever the six of them share isn’t love. They don’t know each other well enough for that as will be painfully revealed in the years to come. But after missions or whenever there's cause, they fall into each other. Natasha learns all the ways in which Thor is human and how young Rogers is when he lets go of the weight of the world. She finds an easy truce with Tony and sees Bruce smile without reservations. She knows Clint from the inside out already.

“What about Pepper?” Clint asks Natasha after the fourth time. None of them dare ask Tony. It’s not a question you voice unless you’re prepared to deal with the answer.

Natasha joins him out on the balcony. “Tony can’t hide anything from her. She’d leave him if it wasn’t allowed.”

Clint nods, the tiniest bit relieved that his burgeoning rapport with Tony is justified. It’s hypocritical given what Clint’s hiding from the rest of them. Natasha knows the others speculate about her and Clint’s relationship. Whenever they spend nights at the Tower Clint sleeps in her room - a holdover from stakeouts when having someone at your back was a need not a luxury. But Clint has always belonged to someone else. Laura knows what her husband does as an agent and he has always been very good at separating that part of himself from the part that goes back to her. He brought Natasha into their lives and as such, she is off limits. The intimacy they’ve built is made up entirely of shared secrets and joint memories. Let the rest of them talk.

Clint looks out at the city. “Tony never kisses you, thought it might be a jealous girlfriend thing.”

“No, it’s Natalie Rushman.”

Clint sighs. “Well at least Banner’s sweet on you.”

“I know.”

Clint smiles and it occurs to her it’s because Clint approves. He likes these people. He trains with Steve and Thor who never make him feel lesser for being merely human. He trades barbs and silly puns with Tony. He eats Bruce’s homemade food because it reminds him of Laura and home. He finds himself, bit by bit, in the reflection of these strangers. He trusts the Avengers with himself but his family is a secret reserved for Natasha alone.

He whistles low. “What the hell have we gotten mixed up in, Nat.”

She doesn’t know what to call it but they can pry it from her cold, dead hands.

* * *

She doesn’t think she’ll end up liking Steve Rogers as much as she does. Alone without the burden of a team or Stark’s provocation he seems a little less untouchable, a little more human. Outside of the Tower loneliness shadows him. She doesn’t know what it says about her that she prefers him this way. He joins SHIELD mostly on a whim. Avengers missions are sporadic and Rogers is the type of man who needs to fill time to prove he’s alive. Fury would have to be a fool to turn down an offer like that.

Out in the DC Burroughs Rogers tries to make a life of his own. It’s pathetic by definition. Sharon’s reports are dry and repeat like clockwork. Steve lives a contained existence: keeping to himself apart from when he visits Peggy Carter twice a month. The rest of the STRIKE team are too intimidated to challenge him in the field and subsequently unable to see him as anything more than a particularly effective mascot. Natasha wonders if this sterile life is really what Rogers wants or if he’s simply dragged himself away from the pack to die out here alone.

His wooden soldier routine is so effective not even Fury is prepared for when Rogers goes AWOL eight hours after Tony Stark’s mansion falls into the Pacific. Natasha is the one who finds him in the crowded rush hour of Union Station scanning the departure boards.

He spots her first. “Natasha.”

She can tell he wants nothing more than to storm off to Stark’s rescue, directly into enemy territory. She has no doubt that he would go straight through her if she tried to stop him but Natasha rarely resorts to fists when subtler weapons will do.

“Tony’s fine. He has it handled." For all she knows Stark is dead. Drowned at the bottom of the sea like Odysseus’s fine crew.

( _Damn you, Tony_. _You don’t get to leave first._ )

Rogers doesn’t look discouraged so Natasha switches tracks. “If Tony needed us, he’d call.”

Another falsehood: subtler, meaner. She knows Rogers will hear _if Tony needed **you**_.

After a few tense seconds her target sags, collapsing into himself, his head in his hands.

“I can’t...“ Steve doesn’t have so many friends in this brave new world that he can afford to lose them. He has lost too much already. His and Tony’s relationship might be rocky but he can’t have already missed his chance to fix them. He looks Natasha in the eye, the vow burning through him. “I can’t lose anyone else... _”_ then stronger, “I _won’t_.”

“You won’t,” she promises without thinking. It’s a dreadful lie: Steve will lose his team, his mantle, himself, and half the world but what will break him in the end is her and Tony. His right hand and then his left: gone with too many things still left unsaid.

Rogers gives her a wry smile but his voice holds an edge. “I’ll hold you to that, Romanoff.”

(He won’t get to hold her. She’ll die a million lightyears away. They’ll bury an empty casket.)

Natasha isn’t wrong about Stark. Tony resurfaces and Rogers yells at him over video chat for his recklessness but as far as she knows Tony never finds out how close Steve came to abandoning his post to follow him into the depths of the ocean. Fury reassigns Natasha to Steve permanently and after two months of resenting the fact he cannot read her mind like Clint she finds herself enjoying his company. Rogers is steady where she is flexible, righteous where she is necessary. They are soldiers designed for different wars: one fought on fields and one fought in shadows but the two of them find their rhythm, the push and pull of something like dancing. A duet all their own.

SHIELD falls in a panic and Natasha can’t help the bitter taste that accompanies realizing why she never suspected the awful truth. She was only fooled because she wanted to be fooled. She was good at her job, she fit in, she excelled. She wanted the chance to wipe the red from her ledger so badly she never let herself see that missions done in the name of SHIELD were Red Room writs with a different emblem. SHIELD turned her into exactly what she always was: a gun to be pointed with the illusion of free will. She let herself trust and believe and belong and she has been punished accordingly.

She loses her purpose at the same time as Steve gains his.

 _Bucky_ , he whispers nearly reverently and there’s something alive in his eyes - the spark that will burn them all down. That flame is what the Avengers could never have of Steve. The part he thought was long dead and buried. Barnes was Steve’s first; whether first lover, first friend, first failure, is irrelevant. Bucky was the first and now he’s the last and Steve cannot lose anything else without losing himself. And he is quite prepared to lose himself.

When Steve falls into the Potomac he’s setting right a wrong. He should have drowned in icy waters that first time round, he should never have come back out. When he topples there is no Hulk to catch him but there is a one-armed man who has nowhere to go but up.

Steve survives. He does not mean to. The fall would have killed anyone else.

(It will kill Gamora, it will kill Natasha in time.)

She finds him still unconscious in the hospital with tubes running out of him. It is disconcerting to see the peak of human perfection banged up and on the edge of death. Wilson visits, as does Fury, but neither stay as long as her. Natasha rounds into the room one night and Tony is already there, his visit perfectly timed to avoid the others and Steve’s brief wakefulness.

Stark’s already made himself comfortable. “Go home and sleep, Eye Spy, not like Cap’s going anywhere like this.”

Natasha hesitates. She could tell Tony about his parents now; before she has proof, before Steve is even awake and while Barnes is still in the wind. It doesn’t feel like a secret yet just something they’ll get around to in due time. But it’s late and she’s tired and Stark’s not going to sleep anyway. When she returns the next day Tony is gone like he was never there.

When Steve wakes for real, Natasha is waiting.

“I can’t,” she says, once he’s lucid enough to understand. Her voice is sharp, unsentimental. “I _won’t_.”

He is still too injured to answer but his fingers brush her hand. People take Steve Rogers’s trust for granted. Fury did, Pierce did. She will not make the same mistake. Steve trusts selectively, believes staunchly, belongs nowhere. He believes in her and even if she got SHIELD wrong maybe she’ll get this right. He is a man on a mission to find the Winter Soldier and this time it's Natasha’s turn to pay it forward. She wants to be the person willing to save an assassin who doesn’t deserve it. She wants to be the friend to Steve that Clint was to her, to help a soldier at war to come in from the cold.

She wants Steve not to feel alone. She wants not to be alone in turn.

(Steve is the third friend she makes. Clint, then Bruce, then Steve. She will lose the first two but never him.)

 _No more secrets,_ he says and Natasha believes if not in absolute truth then at least in Steve Rogers. She releases SHIELD’s files and burns Hydra’s organization to the ground. It was rotten to the foundations, she tells the Senate committee so. She announces who she is to the world and lets herself be seen. It’s terrifying and new but it also feels good to stand in the light.

 _No more secrets,_ she promises.

(Except for the Winter Soldier. Except the death of the Starks. Except Fury and Coulson. Except Laura and Cooper and - )

What beautiful lies. What beautiful liars.

* * *

Secrets are her metier and it’s secrets that destroy them. She cradles each one, so insignificant in the greater scheme, until they're revealed one by one like a horrific magic trick. Until the weight of them breaks the back of Atlas.

The rest of the team learns of Tony’s apocalyptic nightmares via genocidal robot. They learn about Laura and the Bartons when there is no where else to go. Those are not the only skeletons lurking in closets; Natasha knows more. She knows Steve’s investment in Bucky Barnes outstrips what he’s told the rest of them. She knows the Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria Stark. She knows where Bruce’s rage comes from and why Thor can’t stand to watch Steve and Tony fight. She knows her feelings for Bruce are in part a manifestation of her yearning for a different life, without violence and lies. One where she chose to be human instead of the Red Room’s creation and like any such dream it remains impossibly out of reach. Wanda made sure to remind her.

(Natasha was hollowed out a spoonful at a time and freedom didn’t fill her back up. She is a shell of what a person should be, cluttered with other people's secrets.)

Ultron thinks the Avengers are monsters and he is wrong. They are all much too human for their own good or really for the good of the world.

This week it’s Tony’s secret that weakens them. Later it’ll be Steve’s that finally severs the cords.

But the team was Natasha's mission and as such the failure is hers. The Avengers splinter like driftwood under the force of the tides. Bruce escapes them - escapes _her_ \- tired of being used by ally and enemy alike. Thor embarks on a noble quest unaware he will not come back the same man. Clint leaves because his family is not the Avengers and it never has been. Tony leaves because no one asks him to stay. Steve stays because he has no where else to go.

Natasha remains. No one asks her why.

(The Avengers cannot end like this; with a whimper into the night, but be careful what you wish for - it means the **_bang_** comes later.)

This is not the end of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted Natasha to have slightly different relationships with each of the Avengers. She flirts with (and can manipulate) Bruce. She's in a stalemate with (and finds herself too similar to) Tony. She has an intimate yet platonic friendship with (and is indebted to) Clint. She goes all in on Steve after SHIELD falls apart for good and ill. She glosses over Thor as completely untouchable. 
> 
> I wanted to acknowledge the existence of Pepper and the Bartons because they're important and I won't deny that. 
> 
> Comments are always welcome!


	3. Capsize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**capsize:** the failure scenario of a vessel turned on its side or upside down in the water_

The first Avengers team belonged to Fury, or Fate.

The second belongs to Steve.

The New Avengers are built properly: a hierarchy of military men, androids, and red women. The Compound is not the Tower but they live together, eat together, train together. There’s little friction and few cock-ups. There are scattered bar nights none of which cross the forgiving lines of friendship. It works.

Tony drops by the Compound twice a month and it still works. He chats with Rhodes and hands out new tech, fills the air with tales of his exploits while still managing to say nothing. Steve rarely argues. Tony never provokes him. Stark always wears long sleeves and it wouldn’t surprise Natasha if the pair of them still sorted out their differences in back rooms with bruises; monthly maintenance on the Avengers Machine. Nor would it surprise her if they never interacted outside the twenty minutes they talk in full view of the whole team every other week.

She asks Steve only once when he plans on telling Tony about his parents. The answer she gets back is _Not yet_. She doesn’t ask what Steve’s waiting for. She doesn’t think he knows.

(Steve needs to tell Tony and he will. _Tomorrow_ , he vows, and the same the day after, and then one day he runs out of tomorrows.)

It never occurs to Natasha to tell Tony herself. Without her secrets she would be empty.

Meanwhile there are all-new, all-different successes and failures and frustrations. Her and Steve work together flawlessly and the team follows their lead. There is no reason for her to feel cheated when she hears the sound of rolling thunder and a storm god never appears. She trusts Wanda and Sam to watch her back but she suspects she will never feel completely safe without Clint at her side. When Tony comes to the Compound and tosses out his first joke something in her soul eases only to clam up again when he leaves. Sometimes the echoing of explosions off buildings reminds her of the Hulk’s roar and it makes her miss her long walks in the city.

Quantum mechanics was one of the concepts Banner taught her on a meandering walk through the rain. Schrodinger’s cat was meant to illustrate the absurdity of superposition: the utter nonsense of something being in two binary states at once. Both _yes_ and _no_. Both _up_ and _down_. The idea appeals to the spy in Natasha: that opposing absolutes can both be true. Cognitive dissonance woven into the fabric of the universe. The wavefunction collapses only once you lift the box, until then the cat is both alive and dead. _To be_ and _not to be._

Underneath Tony’s long sleeves there are bruises and there are not. Steve is a good friend to both Tony and Bucky. The Avengers are a team and a time bomb. _Superposition_.

Then Zemo lifts the box and they collapse.

* * *

It takes Natasha two months after Germany to catch up with the rest of them in Calcutta. India reminds her of Bruce and Bruce reminds her of how far they've fallen. Steve smiles when he sees her, as if her appearance signifies the turning point in his campaign instead of the end. She cannot return the greeting. She is not here to fight, to spy, or to extend an olive branch. She is a refugee of a war that took too much from her.

Clint slips into her room that night like he used to back at the Tower.

“I’m going home.” He would have left sooner but he was waiting for her. His shift is over, he’s leaving again.

Natasha has to smother the selfish impulse to keep him at her side. “You’re still on Stark’s shit list.”

“Yeah well, I’m sure I’ve dropped a couple spots since I last saw him.” Clint’s head knocks backwards against the headboard and she wonders how thin the walls are. His tired eyes flick to hers. “Did you know?”

He means about the Starks and she wonders how he pried that information out of Steve when he’s silent as the grave whenever someone mentions Siberia. She wonders what sort of bruises Tony was left with this time. She knows she does not envy him.

“Yes. I knew.” She doesn’t bother lying to Clint. He’s accepted her at her worst and this is far from it.

“I thought you liked Tony.” It’s not a casual observation. It’s an admission that for all Clint’s perceptiveness he did not see this coming.

Natasha does like Tony after a fashion but he has been bitten by the Black Widow once before and once bitten, twice shy.

“I know you like Steve,” Clint continues, words hanging in the oppressive humidity, “would you have told him?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “No.”

Clint nods like he expected that. Then quietly, “Would you have told me?”

She can feel the heavy, damp air dragging in her lungs. The seriousness of his question makes her feel sick. Clint has never doubted her, not even those foolish months in the beginning when he should have. Now he’s testing her like the cracks have begun to show. Like there’s double agent in her DNA.

“Yes.” She doesn’t think it’s a lie but how would either of them know?

Clint hesitates and then nods. “I believe you. Fuck. What a goddamn...” He rubs his eyes and deflates. “At least Bruce and Thor aren’t here.”

“They could have helped.”

He snorts. “‘Cause what Steve and Tony definitely needed was more firepower at their disposal. Nick’s gonna kill us as is, imagine the damage we could have done with a green wrecking ball and a literal god.” He stares outside as the blanket of pollution tucks the city to sleep. His next words are a whisper. “Whatever angle you were playing Nat, this can’t have been what you wanted.”

The suggestion makes her want to spit poison. As if _this_ was even remotely an option she weighed up, like she’d planned to gamble away the only part of her life she could still be proud of to crawl back in the shadows.

“It wasn’t an angle,” she snaps, angry at him for thinking it and angrier at herself for fucking it up so badly. “I was trying to keep everyone together. If lying to Stark and accepting the Accords was the cost of keeping us intact then _we should have paid it._ The world needs the Avengers - ”

“ - I know you need them, Nat,” Clint corrects softly. He knows her too well. “And I’m sorry they’re a mess right now. But I quit.” He is not part of her team anymore. His family is waiting for him, hers is splintering around her. How is it of the two of them she ended up more attached?

“I know. You left us.” _You left me_. “We weren’t the same after.”

“Probably not without the Big Guys either. Bet the comm channel is pretty quiet without Tony too.”

The New Avengers weren’t better or worse, just different. Natasha loved them but she did not belong to them. She sold her soul four years ago in New York to five people no better equipped to deal with the responsibility than she was.

“So you’re quitting again.”

Clint takes her wording in stride. “Yeah. I came for Wanda when Cap called and I stayed when I thought Tony was being a massive dick but this is... “ He waves his hand out to encompass the strangeness of a foreign land, their exile. “This isn’t a scrimmage. I thought I was playing Capture-the-Flag and then I found out the penalty box was a secret underwater prison and you and Steve were playing a different game altogether.”

Clint sighs and looks at her. “I’m sorry. I’m going home.”

There’s nothing left. Clint can see the carnage that she refuses to. It’s over. There is no team. The Avengers were a time bomb that finally went off. The explosion took everyone.

She feels numb, only now two months later has reality set in. “Take Lang with you. Stark won’t care.”

Clint pauses on the threshold. “Does Tony know that you knew?”

She shakes her head only once, a sharp jerk of her head to the side.

“What should I tell him if he asks?”

Even preparing to go beg for Stark’s protection Clint will lie for her no questions asked. Natasha knows now there is such a thing as loyal to a fault.

“Tell him the truth.” If it’s a mistake then at least it’ll be a novel one.

“He should hear it from you. I’m thinking he’ll go easier on me if I keep my mouth shut.”

She stares out the window at the sunset and tries to find the beauty in it. “Steve has a phone.”

Tomorrow she’ll steal it from Steve’s bedside table and dial the only number. The call will last one minute and twenty-nine seconds. She will not apologize or beg for forgiveness. Stark won’t speak at all. There is nothing to say. Then she’ll erase the log and replace the phone before Steve even notices it was missing. Another secret she will carry to her grave.

Clint rubs her arms soothingly. “Take care of Wanda for me, okay?”

“Always.” Natasha tries to smile. “Tell Lila, Cooper, and Nate I miss them.”

“You’re their favourite superhero, they know you’re always looking out for them.” Clint kisses her temple. “If you ever get tired of running... don’t be a stranger.”

Natasha won’t take him up on it. She won’t be able to bring herself to abandon Steve or endanger whatever deal Clint gets. She’ll visit after all this is over. She thinks, foolishly, that her exile cannot last forever.

And it does not. But she will never see the Bartons again. They're dead and then she is.

With a fond smile Clint’s gone, leaving her alone in a too big room. Natasha spent years of her life solitary, she does not know why she only feels lonely now. She misses who she used to be when the Avengers were new and full of promise. But now Thor and Bruce are gone. Clint has his doubts and she has her lies. Steve has a flip phone and Tony has a shield. The Avengers collapse because they do not choose each other. Natasha chooses Steve and Steve chooses Barnes. Clint is choosing Laura. Thor chose Asgard and Bruce chose freedom. _Together_ is the latest in a long line of empty promises.

(This time Tony doesn’t get to leave first - this time Tony is left behind.)

In the dead of night Natasha slips into Clint’s room and climbs under the covers. They lie back-to-back and he reaches across the sheets to hold her hand. It does not help her sleep but it keeps the ghosts away.

In the morning Clint leaves. He will not come back to her for seven years.

* * *

Being a fugitive is not new to her and the others adapt, more or less. Wanda is frightened of herself once more until Vision re-enters the picture. Sam finds solace in the anonymity and new places. Steve holds tight to what he needs to to keep from falling apart. Natasha assumed Barnes would be the lodestone he’d refuse to give up as he drowns but she is wrong. Steve has a new mission: to do enough good in the world that he cannot regret leaving Captain America behind.

They gallivant around the world solving petty problems with murder and sabotage. A quartet of wolves exiled from the pack and starved for blood. Sam tries to make their Captain talk but it’s Natasha who gives him what he needs. She keeps them fed on Hydra bases and arms caches. The larger problems she lobs towards New York and Stark’s people. She never tells Steve. He would insist on doing it all himself and he is compromised in ways Natasha never anticipated. She thinks, after Steve’s regret turns to recklessness to passive suicidality, that she may have misjudged him as badly as Tony did. As badly as she misjudged Tony.

Natasha spent a long time tallying all the ways in which Steve changed her for the better, only now does she count the myriad of ways in which she changed him. She dragged him into the shadows, into relativism, into dishonesty. _For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction._ Steve wasn’t made to contain secrets; they destroyed him clawing their way out. The shell they left behind is a soldier without a war. He visits Bucky only occasionally because he cannot bring himself to bear the accounting. He does not like to be reminded that his tiny slice of the past has cost his friends their homes, their families, their chance at redemption. It cost the Earth its best defence. It cost him Tony.

Steve only yearns for those _in absentia_. It used to be Bucky and the 40s and now it's Tony and New York. Steve cannot bring himself to abandon the past, not even when it denies him the present he could have. He never stays in Wakanda for long as if taking too much time with his reward would be cheating when the rest of them have no such luxury. He always comes back to his fellow exiles and the endless grind of purgatory. There is no one to tell him to stop. God’s not watching.

The thread in Steve tightens every day as he waits in vain for what will never come. His punishment is fittingly enough, silence from the most acerbic man on Earth. The limbo made worse in the knowledge that Stark doesn’t have the restraint to be doing it out of spite. Steve will never be forgiven, not in the way he wants. He was taught absolution by the Catholic Church. He believes in confession, in penance, and then the cleansing of the soul. He’s sent his one way prayer and now all there is to do is sit and wait for Stark to tell him the price of his sin.

Except Tony never calls. Natasha knows he never will.

(He never forgave her Natalie after all but then again she never asked him to.)

Stark’s not Catholic. Tony’s gods were men: bitter and fallible, and then silent and dead. Tony works by ceasefire, by detente; a careful blind eye turned to past sins only for skeletons to be dug up and thrown back later. He lives a life where the worst parts of you stain forever and the world has never let him forget it. He doesn't forgive because he is unforgiven. He lives his life anyway. If God's not watching then the devil isn't either.

Natasha speaks the forbidden aloud, nine months in. “He won’t call.”

“He might,” Steve says stubbornly. He and Tony shared parts of themselves the rest of the Avengers weren’t privy to.

“I hope he doesn’t,” Natasha admits. The only reason Tony would contact them now is if the Earth was on the verge of catastrophe.

Steve looks at her with wide, betrayed eyes. She just watches the passing crowd.

They sit and wait for the world to end.

* * *

The days crawl by in an endless sequence.

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..._

Natasha adapts to the silence. To the absence of touch and laughter and warmth. These are the lean years. They prowl the outskirts: picking off the weaker bases, the sickly scientists. They melt into obscurity and become mere shadows themselves. Mere shadows of themselves. They travel light, hit fast and silent. They survive.

The gathering storm happens off-world, in distant galaxies, on magnificent thrones.

And then suddenly it’s already too late.

The worst part of their stand against Thanos is not the Snap. It’s not the ten seconds of confusion when half the battlefield turns to ash or the dawning horror in Okoye’s eyes. It’s not Steve’s tiny murmured _Oh God_ or Vision’s colourless body. The true horror comes twenty-eight minutes later when Natasha is numb and only autopilot causes her to answer her ringtone.

It’s a phone call that breaks her but it’s not from Tony, it’s not from Bruce.

_“Nat?! What just - Laura and Lila and everyone - “_

She stares into the sun as Clint explains to her exactly what she has lost.

* * *

_All go to the same place; all come from dust and to dust all return._

The Avengers chose poorly from the very beginning.

We were the price.

* * *

They’re granted seven days of grace. The immediate catastrophe preoccupies those left behind for a scant week: stabilizing governments and maintaining supply chains. Adrenaline carries them through. It’s a blessing in disguise to not have to think, to have their time eaten up by necessity so there is none left to mourn.

Denial runs out once they return home. That’s what Steve calls Avengers Compound and no one corrects him because it is _home_ still. Even to Natasha and Steve who haven’t lived here in years. Even to Thor and Bruce who never did. Rocket’s home is a spaceship caught between stars but he will take sanctuary here for now. The Avengers logo still shines bright blue but the walls echo in their emptiness. It’s like walking through a crypt. There are too many pieces missing, too many people gone. No one can tell them how to fix this. They are Avengers incapable of avenging.

Natasha sits in the gym and counts the fallen. _Wanda. Sam. Vision. Tony. Laura. Lila. Cooper. Nate. Lang. Barnes. Sharon. Nick. Maria..._ She adds their names to a ledger that keeps getting longer despite her solemn promises. Beside her Bruce is passive, absorbing what it is for the first time in a decade to see his wrathful monster cower, a child scared of greater monsters. Thor and Steve are on the practice mats burning off energy in ways that are closer to punishment than training. They’re circling each other, taking turns launching attacks that are tactically appalling but will bruise just the same.

Natasha’s phone sits silent beside her. It hasn’t rung in seven days.

The only sounds that exist are frustrated grunts and harsh breaths. Both men on the mats are unused to losing. Steve is fast and strong and swift (and scared). Thor is better, stronger, angrier, (terrified). The god lets out a roar not unlike the Hulk’s and beside Natasha Bruce flinches. He flinches again when Thor manages to catch Steve with a full right hook, fist slamming into Steve’s unguarded left cheekbone. It leaves a dark red mark pooling under pale skin. Steve doesn’t bruise easily but Thor’s strength means this time ( _ **this** time_) Steve will pay for every one of his mistakes in blood. He misses the block a second time and now he’s bleeding from his lip, red streaking through his uneven beard. There’s no spark left in his eyes.

(He lost Bucky _again_. He lost Sam. He lost Wanda. He lost Tony. He lost them all and he promised himself he _wouldn’t -_ )

Natasha has spent years next to Steve and she’s never seen him look so fragile. She never dreamed Thor _could_ look fragile. God or not, Thor is stronger. He pins Steve to the ground and his third hit can’t miss. Bruce shifts to interrupt but Natasha wraps a hand around his wrist. He is nothing more than human now and inserting himself between them is not the job of mortal men.

“We can’t let them do this,” Bruce pleads. There is no rage in him left. “One of them is going to do something they can’t take back.”

 _Where were you when that sentiment would have mattered_ , Natasha wants to scream. She doesn’t. Thor’s third hit lands but his fourth never comes. Steve is crying silently, still straining at the hold. When he surges up to kiss Thor he draws blood.

In the distance there is the sound of thunder.

Steve rolls them inelegantly and Thor utters an oath where his injured shoulder slams into the ground. Their mouths never part. It’s rapidly devolving into a different kind of release. They’re as oblivious to their audience now as they were when they were fighting. There’s the telltale rip of textile and a flash of forked lightning outside the wide windows before Bruce’s forearm relaxes under Natasha’s grip. Neither she nor Bruce try to insert themselves - this is for Thor and Steve alone. It would feel worse with the four of them: too many bodies to be a tryst, too few to be a team. There’s a good chance their Avengers will never be complete again. Clint is missing, Stark is gone.

Tony was always the first to leave but he always came back. _(Please Tony, come back.)_

Natasha redials the number and let’s it ring and ring and ring. _(Pick up the goddamn phone, Clint.)_

She can hear Steve’s grunts and Thor’s wails fading behind the clash of thunder and the repetitive click of her call refusing to connect. Bruce lays his head in her lap and stares up through the skylight, through the rain and the clouds to the graveyard of the stars beyond. Eventually the storm quietens. Steve staggers to his feet, naked and marked. He takes one faltering step towards Natasha and then sways. Bruce is already there before he falls, one arm wrapped around shoulders to prop him up. It's awkward: the only other person Bruce ever did this for was Tony. Steve’s too broad, too heavy, too tall, too blond. Too quiet, too regimented, too young and too old.

The Avengers fell apart just as spectacularly as Bruce always said they would. It has only made him kind.

“You’re okay, Cap,” Bruce murmurs as they stagger towards the showers.

Thor doesn’t follow. Natasha trails after him as he climbs the staircase naked to the Compound’s roof and stands in the rain. He lets the torrent wash away sweat, tears, and blood. Only against the backdrop of a monsoon could the God of Thunder appear small. She has never had to worry about Thor. She always thought of him as a distant star. He went off into the universe to do whatever he did and always came back the same man who left. She took it for granted that he always would. As if his boisterousness and lust for life would shield him from the barbs that seemed to wound mortals like her so easily. Except this time Thor came back without his eye, without his family, without a home. Without the weapon that was an extension of himself or the air of invincibility that lesser beings mistook for divinity. He came back to them broken and it breaks her in turn to see him this way.

(Thor is the fourth Natasha calls a friend. She’s ashamed to say it took so long.)

The water runs in rivulets down Thor’s now scarred body and Natasha is frightened. Not of what could harm a god but of how little she can do to ease the suffering of a friend. She stands under his tears and lets the rain soak her through, the weight of it plastering her clothes to her skin.

(Thor isn’t thinking of the rain. Half the universe has disappeared, Stark and Strange are lost in space, Asgard is gone, his people were slaughtered, but all that echoes through his mind is Loki _Loki_ **_Loki_** _**LOKI**_ whose tricks couldn’t save him from the very last joke. Gods are selfish, never let acolytes tell you different.)

“What happened to us?” Thor rasps.

Natasha is made of secrets and they have bought her nothing but death and disappointment. She tells Thor the truth as near as she can. Each secret is a pearl that bursts open on her tongue, the nectar making her drunk. It is her confession and Thor is the only god she knows. He might be listening, he might not be. He just stares into oblivion and when her voice runs dry he does not offer judgment. He remains as still as a marble statue in rain.

His words are a feeble whisper: ungodly, human. “I had a chance to kill the Titan. I didn’t.”

She wonders to whom gods pray for forgiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully acknowledge this is just an interpretation of how things went down between CA:CW and the end of IW.
> 
> In retrospect it really bothers me that Natasha never got to see the Bartons again. Also Natasha and Thor basically never interact onscreen so I felt like they needed to have something here. Consider her thoughts parallel to mine after seeing Thor change through Ragnarok and IW. 
> 
> Comments are welcome and appreciated.


	4. Sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**sink:** complete submersion of the craft underwater_

Twenty-two days pass like a lifetime, like a blur. 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, (There has to be a way back - )

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, (There has to be a way - )

15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, (There has to - )

22 - No one is owed a second chance.

 _And yet_ -

* * *

Tony comes back looking like a wraith who has been to Hades and back in a boat with a tall, blue Charon. He stays on his feet just long enough to say _I told you so_ before collapsing. As he should: the Seer’s part in the play is over. _Exit Stage Left._ He’s been screaming into the void since the end of Act I and only now do you see the wisdom in his warning.

What remains of the Avengers gathers for the finale. They go through the motions, moving themselves around the board to complete the plot. Thor plays the righteous arm of vengeance. Carol is _deus ex machina_ introduced too late. Nebula is Fifth Business. Bruce is wearing the wrong costume and his stunt double is missing. Natasha and Steve make up a chorus of too few members. The denouement is sluggish and predictable. They slaughter the villain and mount his head on a pike for an audience half-empty. There is no applause.

The End isn’t the ending. The curtain never falls. They’re all still stuck here in the After, frozen under the spotlight. Some of them flee into the wings to await their encores, others pick up roles they never studied. Natasha is now The Leader, faking stalwart and true. Steve is The Councillor, rifling through Sam's script.

The show goes on, deaf to tears.

* * *

The world settles down. Humanity is adaptable and the new equilibrium it finds is much the same as the previous: no more evil or graceful than before. Tony is the first to leave as is his wont. Thor is next, his faith in heroes broken and his duty to his people beckoning. Bruce accepts an indefinite posting as a scientific consultant for the American government in California. Clint never came back in the first place. Steve slowly starts retreating, his responsibilities tipping one by one into Natasha's lap. She doesn’t realize he's gone until she finds his formal resignation letter on her desk. There is no one higher in the chain of command he can give it to.

She is the one who stays. There is no one left to ask her why.

There are always heroes. Carol is offworld more often than not but Okoye and Queen Ramonda in Wakanda still check in regularly. Rocket and Nebula take the Milano out and comes back with foul-mouthed tales and refugees. Rhodes runs missions out of DC and when he visits the Compound he leaves bits of new tech behind, gifts from offstage right.

The first Avengers team was Fury's, the second was Steve's. The third is Natasha’s.

She learns Rocket likes animal crackers and becomes attuned to the hydraulic hiss of Jim’s leg braces. She teases Carol about her new haircut and listens to Okoye vent about politicians. The first time she spars with Nebula black eyes flicker when Natasha offers the losing woman a hand up. The first time Nebula beats _her_ , a blue hand extends downward and Natasha realizes what she's built. It's what she's always wanted and what she is never allowed to keep: a family, a team.

(The first were the Red Room who she betrayed. The second was SHIELD who returned the favour. The third were the Bartons who are missing and ash. The last were the Avengers who crumbled from within.)

No one but Natasha lives at the Compound. This isn’t a home anymore. It’s an abandoned superhero playground and all the other children have long since grown up. They’ve gone off to adult jobs and found real things to be scared of. Natasha languishes among the ghosts. She eats bad sandwiches and remembers meals made with love. She drinks old scotch instead of vodka and tastes the bygone years. If she’s quiet enough she can hear laughter around corners. When it storms she goes outside and lets the rain soak her to the bone.

She takes up archery. She’s terrible. It was never a skill she thought she’d have to learn.

They still do Good. Her and Rhodes. Carol, Rocket, Nebula. Okoye, Ayo. They are not Avengers: they are what is left behind after vengeance is revealed as the hollow victory it always was.

They are not Avengers and Natasha can only hope that spares them.

* * *

Bruce comes to see her after eighteen months. He lives on the other side of the country now, doing physics research at Caltech. It’s been good to him. He’s lost that nervous edge and replaced it with steadiness and an even tan. They go out to a fancy restaurant in the city for sushi and talk. It’s a date too late for it to be anything more than catching up with an old friend.

“Your team seem good,” Bruce says over dessert and it hits Natasha then that it is _her_ team not _theirs_ , and that Bruce had been gone long enough to have missed an entire generation in between.

“They are.” She is proud of that. (Third time’s the charm.)

“I’m glad,” Bruce says with an unspoken apology. _I’m sorry we weren’t._

The Avengers might not have always been Good but they were _hers_. Hers to love and take for granted and poison. It aches to remember what was and could have been. 

Afterwards she and Bruce wander through empty streets. It’s a ritual holdover from a different time. They talk about Classics and quantum theory and things that don’t matter because it’s better than hurting one another by mentioning the things that do.

“I didn’t think I’ve ever see so many stars from the city,” Bruce says, head thrown back to gaze upward. “It’s beautiful.”

This version of Bruce is looser and as kind as he always was. He’s at peace with himself and that’s when Natasha knows:

“You’re saying goodbye.”

He spreads his hands, caught. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise. The procedure’s experimental but it should create a meta-state.”

It takes her brain a moment to switch gears. “No more Hulk.”

“No more Hulk.”

That thought has a twin. “No more you.”

He hesitates, the first manifestation of his old nervousness creeping in. “My blood should stabilize somewhere in the central range - ”

“ - That’s unacceptable.” Natasha’s voice is ice and she is shaking. “Thanos took half the universe and you’re going to follow suit and eliminate half of yourself. It’ll kill you and the Other Guy, if it doesn’t kill you outright!”

“It’s not a suicide mission, Nat,“ he pleads.

“It might as well be!”

“I ran it by Tony - ”

“Stark should not be your failsafe for experimenting with things you don’t understand or did you not learn that lesson?” she snaps back coldly.

His eyes narrow, irises completely brown, and it’s novel to see anger brewing there. “You don’t get to tell me how or what I do with either of myself. Not anymore. This is _our_ decision. Mine and _his_.”

Bruce's and the Other Guy's. Natasha doesn’t get a say. Bruce is not part of her team, he was never her lover. He was a mission, then a friend, then absent. He knows there’s a chance this plan goes badly; it’s why he’s here, it’s why he told her. He’s tying up loose ends because unlike the rest of them he knows to say the things you must before you run out of time. She still can’t shake the unfounded feeling of betrayal. _Their_ team is over and yet she finds herself clutching at the tatters of a memory that was a delusion at best and a nightmare at the end.

She wants him to stay but Bruce never promised her forever. She can allow him the dignity of his choices. It’s not as if her own were faultless. 

She swallows back the tears that come too easily these days. “You already saw Tony then?”

Bruce exhales when he realizes he’s not in for a fight. “Yeah. Stayed with him and Pepper last week. Got to meet Morgan.”

“Morgan?”

Bruce looks confused and then silently hands her his phone. Onscreen is a photo of an infant with wide, dark eyes. Swiping reveals more: an exhausted Pepper with a smile, an awkward Bruce cradling a wrapped bundle, and finally Tony leaning over the baby with an expression torn between pride and wonder. A slideshow of hard-won happiness. _Morgan Stark_.

Tony didn’t tell her. Twice bitten, forever shy.

“I didn’t know,” Natasha croaks. The old her would have. The new her can only envy Stark’s ability to move on from afar.

It stings more knowing her team didn’t tell her either. Not Rhodes who has probably known from the beginning, nor Nebula who visits upstate on occasion to make sure Stark’s still alive. Tony’s daughter is not a destructive secret to keep but it reminds Natasha of the cracks in them. How little pressure it would take for her team to give way like all the teams before them.

Bruce has the grace to save his pity. “After the ruckus that happened with their wedding I’m sure they just wanted to keep something for themselves.”

She accepts the kind excuse and catches his hand, tracing the fuzzy human skin for the last time. “When are you doing it?”

“Not for ten days or so. I have a hotel down near the Tower.” He pauses like he remembers what it used to stand for too. “I’m dropping in on Steve tomorrow. I fly out Wednesday.”

“Norway,” she guesses. He’s saying goodbye to them all.

“Yeah. Stay with Thor for a week then back to San Francisco.” Bruce never says _back_ _home_. He’s a true wanderer. The Avengers could have been a place for him to land but they shook him loose.

She knows what he’s going to ask next. “I don’t know where Clint is.”

Bruce squeezes her hand. “Well give him my love when you see him.”

 _When_ not _if_. A statement of ludicrous optimism from a man who once had none. As if Clint hasn’t ignored every one of Natasha’s calls for the past year.

They part at the corner of Fifth and 32nd with a hug. She squeezes him tightly and Bruce clings right back. Even the strongest of them are fragile.

“Next time we’ll do Chinese,” Bruce promises. A too-late second date, should she want it.

But Natasha never sees him again. He becomes someone else in the interim. It's unfair to hold change against any of them but she does. She wants them all back the way they were in that Tower in a fairytale that never really happened. She wants another chance for them all to be better.

Someone has taken the **_A_** off Avengers Tower.

No one is owed a second chance.

* * *

_562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568,_

_569, 579, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575,_

_576, 577, 578, 579, 580, 581, 582,_

_583, 584, 585, 586, ____, ____, ____,  
_

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow._

She has all the time in the world so why can’t she just -

* * *

Steve is the only one who comes to visit the Compound. He’s the only one besides her who remembers when it was once _home_ but unlike Natasha instead of finding comfort in the familiarity he only sees the emptiness. He fled to the city five months after cleanup, laundry is just his most convenient excuse to come back. The truth is simply that he was never meant for solitude and even if he no longer has a team he still has her.

(Natasha was meant to be alone but somewhere along the way she acquired a family, and somewhere further she lost them.)

With Barnes gone and the Avengers disbanded Steve finds purpose in other things. He runs the local support group because hearing the pain his failures have wrought is the penance he has assigned himself in the absence of a greater god. Natasha has watched from the shadows as he reassures without condescension, trying to guide others with tips from his own life. Doing his best to honour Wilson. She does not doubt his sincerity but it’s a lie just the same. Steve opens up his old wounds but guards the fresh ones close. He never mentions Bucky, never mentions Sam or Wanda; a hypocrite to the last.

There’s no absolution to be found here. Steve will never be forgiven in the way he wants because this time there is nothing to forgive. The Snap is not his fault or rather not his fault alone. They all chose wrong. They chose loyalty, family, love, duty, redemption - their ship sank under the strain, they took half the universe with them. Too many good people drowned and the wretched are left behind in the debris.

It only takes two months of visits for her and Steve to start falling into bed together. They never did at the Tower or when they were leading the New Avengers, or even those years in exile when Steve walled himself off from everyone. Natasha doesn’t know what’s changed but she’s grateful for the brief relief and the comfort of human contact. If those are weaknesses then she can no longer deny her own fragility. Steve is solid and real and he’s the only other person still around who remembers the original Avengers team back when they were still naive and unsinkable.

(What's changed is this: Steve's let go of the idea of Them. It's Natasha who can't. _She_ is the ghost that haunts this place and Steve comes back to pay his dues.)

For a few short hours with Steve, Natasha lets herself pretend they still have time. They’ve slept together before but it’s different now that they’re alone and she cannot help but categorize all the differences between the Steve of Then and the Steve here and now. He’s gentler than he used to be, not that he ever wasn’t. (Tony was the exception. He was always Steve’s exception.) Now there’s no heavy pressure at all. Instead of being coaxed and dared, he reaches first. Instead of getting up for his early morning run he sleeps in late and pulls her close. Neither of them mentions how lonely it feels with only the two of them because it’s still better than sleeping alone.

Steve runs a hand through the red roots of her hair. “You’re growing it out.”

She hadn’t thought about it. “Might as well.”

He runs a hand down her side soothingly and this soft post-coital inspection is different too, as if he needs to reassure himself that she’s still here. His fingers stop just short of the scar on her left abdomen where the Winter Soldier’s bullet ripped through. He doesn’t touch. His gaze is fixed on the circular entry wound and she knows he isn’t thinking about her, he’s thinking about Barnes. She doesn’t begrudge him his grief in the same way she doesn’t begrudge Nebula’s hesitation every time Natasha reminds her of her sister, or Natasha’s own foolish hope when she spots the dull sheen of black leather and lets herself believe for a moment that Fury escaped death once more. They all take what they can from the echoes, greedy for comfort and unable to let go.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers. His eyes leave the scar and find hers. “I wish I could have stopped him.”

She has no doubt Steve would take the bullet for her but she also knows he would take the fall for Barnes first. He wouldn’t even hesitate. He would jump at the chance to be the man who orphaned Tony and nearly killed her to spare Barnes the same. It’s that peculiar type of selfishness and selflessness that makes Steve Rogers worth knowing. To sacrifice yourself for someone you love is not a solely noble venture.

"You're forgiven," Natasha says because even if they're just words Steve still needs to hear them.

Steve will never get the chance to save his best friend from falling to his death. But Natasha will. She won’t hesitate either. She’ll leap over the edge because she has never lost hand-to-hand to Clint and she’ll think, as she falls, that this has been a long time coming.

Steve’s hand darts back like he’s been caught overstepping, mentioning ghosts in this place that already has too many. For all their mistakes maybe they don’t deserve to grieve what they’ve lost.

“It’s okay,” Natasha reassures him. Such an inadequate phrase. “I miss them too.”

Steve nearly chokes. “I miss us.” He means everyone. The ones who never met, the ones who never will. The ones who wouldn’t be able to stand side-by-side without ripping each other to shreds.

“You were the only Avenger Fury approved,” Natasha admits. For some reason she can’t bring herself to look at Steve. “He didn’t think Tony would work out. I wasn’t even considered, I worked best alone. Fury didn’t know Thor would show up and if he hadn’t needed Bruce for the Tesseract he would never have brought him in. Too much of a risk. After Loki Clint just needed to get away from SHIELD. No one trusted him. He followed me.” It’s like remembering a past life. “We weren’t the Avengers Fury wanted. We were never meant to be.”

Steve gives a small smile. “We worked out.”

Except:

“No, we didn’t.”

It’s a cruel thing to say as she rolls out of bed, out of reach. She crosses to the bathroom and spends too long under the spray of the shower remembering a dream that ran away from her. The Avengers were the failed experiment of a man whose entire life’s work amounted to spit-polishing a jackboot. Their saving grace is that he did not live to see their ultimate failure; the inevitable culmination of too many wrong choices. She was too independent, Clint too human, Bruce too flighty, Thor too alien, Tony too anxious. Steve too stuck, too steady, too self-righteous. They failed Nick too.

(The team was her family. The failure was hers.)

Steve doesn’t mention it when Natasha returns. The mattress is so well made it barely dips when he settles on the other side. They used to go back to their separate rooms and then she’d wake in the middle of the night to find him on the range, or the roof, or the grounds - anywhere to avoid the emptiness of a cold bed. He sleeps in her room now whenever he visits. He doesn’t keep the ghosts away he tempts them closer and she finds comfort in that now.

“Goodnight, Nat,” Steve whispers softly from too far away across a too large bed.

(Tony’s bed at the Tower had been humongous and one night he’d dared them all to - )

In the darkness she stares at Steve’s back and thinks that under a different set of circumstances they could have made a go of this. Properly, with dates and flowers and awkward dances. But that’s not an option now. They can’t move on, not even for each other. She thinks she’d try. She knows Steve couldn’t.

(Steve only loves those out of his reach. By the time he realizes what he has, Natasha will already be gone.)

In the middle of the night she slips out hoping she is forgiven. Steve hates waking alone. It reminds him of all the people who vanished between moments he shut his eyes. She pads downstairs and sits in front of her com screens with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as she watches the radio streams careen past. She is the last Director of an obliterated SHIELD. Her team are holograms she can talk to and never touch. Upstairs is a man she might have loved and on the other side of the country is another who is no longer the same. The only god she knows is drowning on dry land under a tidal wave of regret. The man twice-bitten has found his peace without them. The first and best friend she’s ever had is missing.

The Avengers were never meant to be so what gives her the right to mourn them?

She stares up at the screens and wonders how it is Nick Fury missed so much.

* * *

Scott Lang still looks at them with wonder mingled with desperation. It looks out of place five years post-Snap. The rest of the world has realized the Avengers have failed them, Lang has not.

“Time travel,” Steve repeats once they’re alone.

“Don’t get your hopes up, according to Lang it’s a long shot.” Natasha already knows it’s too late.

“He’ll figure it out,” Steve says stubbornly. There are other experts but from the moment Lang outlined the problem Steve immediately fixated on one man.

The difficulty with relying on Tony Stark to cut the wire for you is assuming that he’ll want to. Tony’s not invincible. He rebuilds himself after every failure but it takes a little longer each time. A few weeks after Afghanistan, three months after Stane, six after palladium poisoning. A year after New York, two after Ultron, three after Siberia. It’s been five years and counting since losing to Thanos a billion miles from home and further still from them.

Now he’s built something worth keeping. He has a family: a wife he’s always loved, a daughter he always will. Natasha hears enough through the grapevine to suspect Stark’s truly happy and she isn’t sure she’s ever met a version of him that was. He’s done what the rest of them can’t, he’s moved on. Their ship is a wreck and it turns out Tony’s the only one who can swim. The rest of them are drowning: in alcohol, in blood, in penance. She’s worried if they reach out they’ll just end up drowning him too.

( _They_ _**do.**_ )

“We’re bringing Scott,” Natasha says instead, sidestepping her doubts.

Steve shakes his head. “It’ll be better coming from us.”

“No, it won’t.” The reminder is brutal but she gets her way and is proven right.

Stark backs away once he recognizes them, body unconsciously angled to shield his daughter from harm. Scott rescues most of the conversation just by being himself: earnest and honest and open. There’s time travel and second chances but Tony won’t make the same mistake a third time.

He tells them _no_. (Part of Natasha is proud of that.)

Professor Hulk tells them _yes_. (He is beloved now and she should not feel cheated.)

They send Scott forward and backward until -

Steve walks in with Captain America's shield and Natasha blinks. It must be a lingering afterimage from the past; a sign she’s spent too much time alone. Tunnel vision is an awful thing because she misses the figure who walks in beside him entirely.

“Sorry Widow, I only brought the one,” Tony says, drawing her attention before he glances at Steve, “I told you people would be jealous. Now where’s Barton, he owes me money.”

Something in Natasha's soul eases. She pulls him close and hugs him tight - for her benefit, not his. Without the hard casing of the arc reactor she can feel his heartbeat through his T-shirt. He smells like hair gel and metal and home.

Tony grunts under the unexpected assault before cautiously letting his arms to encircle her. "I'm not kidding about Barton, I'm not as rich as I used to be."

She smiles into his shoulder.

Over the next week the Compound undergoes as exorcism: the living have come to oust the ghosts from their quarters. Natasha finds Clint in Japan. If she were a better woman she’d care about the dead men on the ground. If she were a better friend she’d have joined Clint long ago. He wasn’t made for this: the killing, the loneliness, the missions far from home. That was her. Clint saved her eighteen years ago. He gave her a home, a purpose, his trust, his family. The least she can do is return the favour.

The Professor and Rocket come back from Norway with Thor in tow, barely recognizable. Rhodes flies in from DC and Nebula is recalled in the Benatar. Scott crashes on the couch for three consecutive nights before someone finds him a room. The old haunted mansion is a home once more.

Around them Natasha feels the water close in.

* * *

Conventional wisdom holds the Avengers fell apart sometime between the fall of SHIELD and and the rise of the Accords.

Pinpointing exactly when it all went wrong is trickier. Bruce would cite Ultron or the terrified people of Johannesburg and Sokovia. Clint would put money on when they all chose sides and fought each other in an airport in Germany. Steve would say the disintegration began in a bunker at Camp Leigh and ended in a bunker in Siberia. Thor had no inkling they were breaking until they were already in pieces - he'd given the rest of them too much credit and his own steadying presence too little. For Tony the foundation was rotten from the start: with the tragic not-death of a near-nameless agent so Fury could manipulate them all into being. 

Natasha doesn't give a damn what the truth is anymore. She doesn't know where they all went wrong, she doesn't care. She just wants to go back to the Beginning; before the greyness, before the Fall.

But what's the point?

She knows she'd jump anyway.

* * *

The original Avengers reform in upstate New York in the spring of 2023.

They’re a touch late; so far into the After it’s comical. It’s the first time the six of them have been in the same place since Ultron. Since Steve said _Together_ and then they all wilfully disobeyed. They try to relearn how they fit now that they’ve all been gutted of those intrinsic parts everyone else found so objectionable. Clint no longer has a secret family to split his loyalty. Thor no longer has a silver-tongued brother he can’t control. Tony doesn’t live in mad anticipation of a horrific future because it has already come to pass, and Steve can no longer deny his past has gone up in smoke. Bruce has left his uncontrollable wrath behind and along with it part of his humanity. Natasha has no secrets left and the truth of her laid bare is pathetic.

They still try to shield each other from the worst of their wounds, as if any of them still had the right to judge. Thor mourns a brother whose name he dares not utter aloud. Steve likewise never mentions Bucky as if Tony might hear the whisper through soundproof walls. Stark never videocalls Morgan or Pepper when Clint’s in earshot. The Professor treads softly as if the peace he brokered between his two selves might have cost him his place among them. Clint wears the wedding ring he never got to as a field agent. Sometimes Natasha slips into his room and settles next to him, back-to-back, and grips his hand tight as he sobs. He’s forgotten on which side of the bed Laura slept. He’s forgotten Cooper’s laugh, and Lila's favourite song, and a million other details he never thought to memorize because he thought he’d get a lifetime.

They're a sorry lot and it's up to a Lang to rescue them again.

Cassie shows up one day with bright eyes, her stepdad considerably more grim beside her. She takes a selfie with Professor Hulk and becomes an overnight sensation. After that the floodgates open. Okoye makes a rare visit from Wakanda and Natasha makes sure she has access to all Avengers tech and files in case the plan goes awry. Valkyrie shows up weekly bringing news of New Asgard. She’s the one who pulls Thor out of his cups and reminds him of the half of his Kingdom that survived. Just seeing her reminds Thor of Valhalla and the vaunted halls that await those who die a good death. (He thinks maybe that’s all he’s good for now.) Val’s Pegasus is ridiculously in love with Steve and spends the entire time following him around the Compound, nibbling at his shirt.

One day Natasha walks into the foyer and Pepper and Morgan are already there. Tony isn’t. Pepper is distant but warm and that has to mean something because Natasha knows well enough she can be cold and ruthless. Pepper’s smile is tinged with resignation. She knows the Avengers is how she loses her husband. Whether to death or Iron Man or the bitterness of another betrayal remains to be seen.

(Pepper Potts is a futurist too. She called the ending fifteen years ago: Tony will die as Iron Man. He will make her watch, he will leave their daughter behind, and most cruelly of all the world will sing his praises for it.)

 _Morgan, come say hello,_ Pepper says and Natasha gets to meet the latest in a long line of Starks. She’d forgotten how much she liked children, how curious and unafraid they were of her. She’d made herself forget she was once a beloved Aunt and someone’s favourite superhero because it hurts too much to remember the opportunities she let pass by.

Clint always disappears when the families visit. He and Rocket escape to blow shit up and mourn their children elsewhere.

These are the days the once empty Compound overflows with the living. The Avengers, Scott, Rocket, Nebula, Val. Cassie and Paxton in from the city, Pepper and Morgan who fly in from upstate. Carol drops by once for dinner before heading back out on an interstellar mission. On a Tuesday a sorcerer named Wong steps out of a portal bearing several tubs of Avengers-themed ice cream that he hands out like Santa Claus. Then someone starts an argument about whose flavour is best and the night devolves from there.

(It’s _Hulk-a Hulk-a Burnin’ Fudge_ , Strange is not wrong about that.)

(He’s not wrong about what comes next either.)

It’s not all good times. The first argument Rocket witnesses between Steve and Tony ends with him screaming at them and spraying bullets into the Compound wall. It’s Rhodes who pries the gun from his hands and drags him into the garage, gets him drunk enough to cry for the family he lost and cannot stand to be reminded of. Sometimes Nebula and Tony sit up on the roof alone for hours under the stars; Stark uncharacteristically silent, Nebula uncharacteristically soft. Steve practices alone in the gym with his shield but there is no joy in it. He carries the metal like it’s heavy - and it is - but it didn’t use to be to Steve. Thor goes longer and longer without drinking but he never manages to make it through the day. Natasha takes walks around the Compound with the Professor but she can’t help but notice the difference in their strides when once they’d been well matched.

On the nights Natasha doesn’t spend with Clint she joins Steve already asleep in her bed. He sleeps like the dead now that the Compound is full, knowing his people are safe. She is the opposite: after years of ghosts so many heartbeats are deafening. She makes her way downstairs to find Tony still awake in the kitchen. The same sort of place where long ago he made an ill-timed proposition and started this mess of them on a lark.

Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever thanked him for that.

“You were right,” she says. Tony peers questioningly over glasses that are no longer for show. She takes her private stash of scotch down from the top cupboard. The very best of old poisons.

Tony declines a glass. “Everyone comes around to the good stuff eventually.”

Sipping the acrid liquor reminds Natasha of every bit of their history she’d prefer to have left behind. Every burnt bridge, every sharp glare, every festering wound. It's a masterpiece anyway.

The taste of smoke trickles down her throat. “You and Steve seem to be getting along.”

“Not like we’re great at hiding it when we aren’t,” Tony replies bluntly. Natasha can’t help but note his long sleeves. He notices. “I’m not sleeping with him if that's what you're really asking. He’s all yours.”

He steals a glance at her bare arms and Natasha wonders if he's envious or resentful that Steve is so careful not to leave bruises these days.

“We’re not like that,” she repeats monotonously.

“He is literally asleep in your room right now. You get points for subtlety, Rogers doesn’t.”

“We’re not.“

Tony pulls back to study her. “Huh. So you lost out to Tall, Dark and Missing too. Well I know what that’s like.”

Natasha shouldn't envy a dead man. She shouldn't envy Tony either who learned his lesson harshly.

“Guess I'm just jealous.” Her voice shakes, her mask five years out of practice. Her chest squeezes around nothing. It’s an old, dry ache. Steve’s devotion has always belonged to someone else. To Peggy Carter, to Barnes, but in a twisted way to Tony too even if he never knew it. Natasha always knew better than to hope.

Yet here she is. A fool in love.

Tony looks up, alarmed. “Dammit Nat, that wasn’t supposed to be a comparison or an insult. I just meant - “ He sighs. “Steve's an idiot. You guys could have had... something. I’m sorry it didn’t shake out that way.”

He is sorry, she can see it in his eyes. He knows what it is to reach for things you do not deserve and the lies you tell yourself when you are denied them. He knows what it is to be best at what you do and to have it damn you. He knows what it is to strive to be _better_ and have no idea what that actually, practically means.

They both tried to find better in a man more lost than either of them.

“I’m sorry.” Natasha’s voice is scratchy, reflexively trying to claw back the admission, but if she doesn’t say it now one day she will run out of tomorrows.

Tony frowns. “For what?”

“For not apologizing the first time, after Hammer.” She has always had an easier time talking in the dark. “I knew you’d never trust me after Natalie and since I had nothing to gain, I didn’t bother. I should have. It might have changed things.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“You can’t know that - “

“I liked you anyways.” Stark’s lips twist and he exhales. “That’s why it sucked when I found out you never felt the same.”

Tony is the last friend Natasha makes and that is not his fault. She cannot be forgiven, neither of them believes in it. There's no God watching but there are truces and old poisons and stolen glimpses. There's an empty stage and an audience waiting.

Tony rubs his eyes. “Doesn’t matter now.“

Of course it does. They have no idea how close they are to the end.

He looks across at her. “Why are you up?”

The truth is easy, it’s the lies that were always hard. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m alright.” He smiles crookedly and then in fades. “Not always, but for now.”

They’re dead, the pair of them. There is a price to pay for retaking the test and they are not the only one willing to pay it but they are the ones who keep ledgers and count costs. They spent their lives dealing death and now their tokens are being recalled. They'll die violent deaths in the spotlight as their best friends watch and scream and mourn. They'll save the world.

Scotch and vodka. Heart and soul. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

There is still work to be done around the Compound: tests to run, tech to build, intel to gather. There is still time. Very soon there won’t be. In the silence between heartbeats Natasha can hear the faint rushing of sand slipping through an hourglass.

“It’ll work,” Steve repeats like a mantra.

Natasha looks out over the bustling dinner table and thinks, traitorously, that even if it doesn’t she could spend the rest of her life just like this.

* * *

And you know what?

She does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last time all 6 original Avengers were together and not in battle before Endgame is way back in AoU at the Barton farmhouse. That's wild. Considering Clint is missing from most of _The Avengers_ I'd argue that we only got 3ish hours of all six of them as a team out of 12ish hours of "Avengers" movies (+ CA:CW). How have I never noticed that before? 
> 
> (Probably because the plot always follows either Tony or Cap so when someone else dips out it doesn't impact flow that much.)
> 
> Let's pretend that between Lang showing up and the time-mission there was a 4ish week interlude of science, construction, logistics and arguing.
> 
> Comments are welcome and appreciated.


	5. Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**swim:** keep yourself afloat, keep yourself breathing, pick a direction and **go**._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More explicit content than previous chapters.

The last Night is Clint’s fault. The first was Tony’s eleven years ago.

Tony has just finished a video call with his daughter and Natasha doesn’t know if it was Morgan’s laughter or the softness in Stark’s answer but suddenly Clint has a handful of Tony’s shirt and the man himself slammed against the wall. He barely has time to register surprise before Clint’s mouth is pressed furiously against his like an incubus starving for a secondhand taste of fatherhood and happiness. Tony doesn’t begrudge him, lets him plunder for what he knows Clint won’t find.

(What Clint wants Tony can’t give him. Or rather he can, he will, on an apocalyptic battlefield six days from now.)

Tony draws blood before Clint hisses and draws back, finally letting his quarry breathe. His trembling fingers are still tangled angrily in Stark's shirt. There's red smeared across his lower lip, his eyes are chaotic: desperate and envious and sad. Natasha's very own patron saint. Tony’s eyes seek out hers over Clint’s shoulder like she knows if Clint’s about to shake apart in his hands or haul back and hit him.

To be honest it could go either way.

Steve rounds into the room and freezes as he takes in the tableau. “What’s going on here?”

Tony's short laugh belongs to a starving hyena on the Serengeti.

“What does it look like, Cap?” Clint says viciously before he leans in to kiss Tony again. Natasha hears Steve’s sharp intake of breath as Tony’s hand comes free to wrap around Clint’s neck, anchoring him closer.

Clint pants when they break. He has one fist in Tony’s collar, the other reaches back towards Natasha without looking. He knows she'll be there. He still knows every part of her, even the parts she's not proud of.

Her gaze swivels to Steve. She says nothing but extends her hand in invitation.

Steve hesitates. He stares: first at Clint, then at her, then at Tony. Natasha doesn’t know what he’s looking for. She doesn't think he knows either. They are themselves - nothing less and certainly nothing more. The Avengers burned themselves to the ground long ago but there is still warmth to be found in the embers. Their ashes are still beautiful as they fall like snowflakes from the sky.

“No,” Steve croaks and then adds in a rush, “ - not yet. We need... I want..." His eyes are bright - not with a spark but with water. With tears. " ... _everyone_.”

He doesn’t mean Rhodes or Nebula or Carol. There are people they know better, people who have spent longer as heroes, people who care and who they love, and then there is _Them_. The six of them who birthed the Avengers, the six of them who failed the universe.

Steve goes off to find the rest, throwing glances behind him as if the three of them will vanish the moment his back is turned.

Tony stares after him. “He’s not really gonna invite the space raccoon, right?”

Clint’s laugh burst out of him like a sob that was held too long under pressure but there’s genuine joy underneath its manic edge and it soothes a part of Natasha to hear it again.

“You got a bed that’ll fit us in this place, Stark?”

The Compound is not the Tower and Tony’s room isn’t the penthouse floor. The bed is reasonable but not extravagant and there’s no way the six of them are going to fit onto a queen-sized mattress. Clint and Tony are still arguing about it when Steve returns with the others in tow. He pauses at the threshold, balanced on the precipice. A man at the edge of the drop or a vampire awaiting permission.

(This is Tony's room and Steve's still waiting for a phone call that will never come. Tony's gods are dead and he will join them soon enough.)

"In or out, Cap, you're causing traffic," Tony says.

Steve takes a deep breath and steps across only to find himself tangled up in Clint. He launches himself at Steve who knows intimately what it is to lose everyone you care for and have to learn to navigate a new world alone. Steve surrenders as easily as he did the first time. He tries to convey with touch what he cannot manage in words. He wants for Clint to know he's not alone.

Thor watches them from behind sunglasses with a blank expression. Then he turns to leave and runs straight into the Professor. The green giant murmurs something too soft to hear as he pleads with Thor to stay like Natasha once did to Bruce. It was a terrible offer then and it’s a terrible offer now. Thor shakes his head. He has lost too much to let this new-old family worm their way into his heart again. He barely survived the loss of his first family. He thinks he will not survive the loss of a second.

(He will though, and eventually he will build a third. The Lord of Thunder and Sweet Rabbit, a Blue Meanie, a Yellow Insect, a Steady Warrior, a Terran named Quinn and eventually the Fiercest Woman in the Galaxy.)

In the end Thor is undone by his humanity: the part of him that wants is simply greater than the part of him that fears. He sinks, beer in hand, into the armchair to steal glances at them all. Natasha catches Tony’s eye and he stands behind her, runs his calloused hands under her shirt and up her sides. He isn’t like Steve, he doesn’t avoid the scars. His clever fingers map all the times she wasn’t perfect like a man reading braille.

“Do you wanna go high or low?” he whispers in her ear, eyes locked on their mutual target. They’ve put on this show before. It’s just different now that neither of them is acting.

Natasha smiles softly at Thor. “High.”

She climbs into Thor’s lap, straddling him with her knees. She kisses his cheek as a distraction before she steals his beer. She makes sure Thor’s eyes are on her as she takes a long swallow and then passes it to Stark to place out of reach. Thor doesn’t touch. He holds himself back, desperately clinging onto self-preservation. It’s a good instinct much too late to make a difference. He was promised to them a decade ago back when he was still a prince and not a king, still a son instead of an orphan.

(He is learning _brother_ is a much harder title to shake.)

Natasha careful removes Thor's sunglasses so she can see his eyes dart to and fro. She can feel the heat of Tony behind her as she lifts her shirt and bra off her in one motion. Thor’s hands tense on the chair arms, confronted by a last temptation.

Natasha slowly reaches for Thor’s cheek. She runs her fingers through his beard, unruly and clean and new. “You can touch you know,” she murmurs. “I want you to.”

Thor shakes his head sad dignity, like he is too old for such foolish things.

“Your loss, ZZ Top,” Tony says from behind her as his hands circle her breasts, teasing. She leans back against him, pressing herself into his growing arousal and giving Thor a better view.

Thor’s left pupil is blown wide, his right is not. His missing eye is artificial and the difference is subtle but there. It’s one of the million imperfections that make him a lesser god and a better man. He’s not quite the glorious prince Natasha remembers but it would have been a shame if he was.

“You’re so beautiful,” Thor whispers and Natasha hears the fragile undercurrent.

She goes to answer but Tony is faster. He always is. “She is beautiful. She’s also deadly. Want to take her off my hands for me?”

Instead of waiting for an answer Tony steps back abruptly and Natasha loses her balance. Thor automatically grabs her hips to stabilize her. There’s the staticky pulse of electricity where his fingertips meet her waist. It’s enough to remind her Thor belongs to the storm and she can’t imagine what a burden that power must be.

When she glares back at Stark he just winks before he walks over to join Bruce. ”Don’t be mad, Widow, you’re clearly in good hands.”

Thor gently rubs his thumbs in circles at their anchor points on her hips but he takes no initiative. She doesn’t mind.

“May I?” Natasha asks, leaning closer. What a ludicrous thing to ask the once brash Lord of Thunder.

Kissing Thor tastes the same, tingling with power. He’s muscle under softness and scarred in ways she never knew his skin could remember. His perfection is enhanced by every fault she finds, every mortal detail making his godhood more miraculous. He’s lightning in a bottle. Natasha has always preferred her gods like this: kind, forgiving, touchable, _human_. He kisses her back like a damn has burst, like she is the last banquet in Asgard’s extinct halls. He stands and lifts her like she weighs nothing before tipping her backwards onto the bed, his lips never leaving hers.

The pair of them narrowly avoid crashing into Clint in his underwear and a shirtless Steve.

“Watch it,” Clint yelps, breathless, before rolling out of the way as Thor follows her.

“Yellow card, interference!” Tony calls from the sidelines. “Chop, chop! Get back to it, Tweety. Cap’s winning, you’ve only managed to get his shirt off.”

Steve rolls his eyes but Natasha can see the smile in the soft curve of his mouth. He also takes advantage of the distraction to deftly strip Clint out of his boxer shorts.

“I win,” Steve announces, just competitive enough to be smug and just relaxed enough to be happy.

“You cheated,” Clint grumbles. He looks to her for sympathy. “He cheats.”

“I know,” Natasha replies and Clint looks mortally offended. “I like him better this way.”

Steve smiles easily at her before he soothes Clint’s loss with heavy kisses down his sternum, trailing towards his abdomen. Before he can go lower Clint’s grip tenses around her arm and Natasha wonders how long it’s been for Clint since Laura; if even Steve is too much a stranger to break the spell. Natasha brushes a hand through Steve’s hair and when he looks up she shakes her head minutely. They have a secret language all their own now. Steve takes her cue and goes back to stroking without particular intent. Clint silently thanks her with a bitten lip and a nod.

Clint taps Steve’s shoulder. “Alright, you win. Thor still has all his clothes on, go play with him.”

Steve’s eyes flick over to where Thor is standing, staring down at the three of them. Steve approaches him slowly. Thor isn’t going to break. Not for Odin, not for Hela, not for Steve, but just because gentleness is unnecessary does not mean it goes unappreciated. They are of a height, eye to artificial eye, as Steve slings his arm around Thor’s shoulders and takes his weight like Bruce used to do for Tony and once did for Steve.

“It’s good to have you back,” Steve says and Thor nods. Steve hesitates, unused to voicing his personal thoughts aloud. “I missed you.”

That’s when Thor seems to collapse, crumpling into Steve’s arms. It’s different from the last time Natasha watched them. Kinder both ways. This time Thor is bearded and Steve is not. This time they use their strength to find comfort in touch instead of in pain. This time Tony is back and Clint is found and they are six.

Clint lays next to Natasha on the bed so they’re pressed together shoulder to ankle: her facing the East, him facing the West. In their seven years apart this is what she missed most: having someone at her back who wasn’t a supersoldier or a genius or a god. Someone ordinary. Clint Barton’s just a man with a bow and arrow who was never as afraid of falling as he should have been.

She can feel the cadence of his breath change and when she turns she understands why. Tony has never been afraid of the Hulk or Bruce or change in general. He also has his pants unzipped and the Professor has one hand - one _green_ hand - wrapped around Tony’s intimate anatomy. The other is stroking across Tony’s scalp and Natasha understands Clint’s mix of arousal and apprehension. Tony looks vulnerable, dwarfed by the Professor’s stature, at the tender mercy of a rage-monster-mad-scientist. It’s trusting and somewhat insane and perfectly Tony.

(Tony was only afraid of falling once and then he taught himself to _fly_.)

 _“Fuck_. Jesus, Bruce - “

“...you’re okay. I’ve got you...” Appearances to the contrary Bruce hasn’t really changed at all. He’s still soft and angry and kind, and suddenly Natasha needs him to know she can accept change too.

She leaves the supervision of soldiers and gods to Clint to join them. “Hey Bruce.”

“Hey Nat.” He smiles, goofier and freer than she’s ever seen.

“ _Hey Tony_ ,” Tony bites out, frustrated by the lack of movement but unable to squirm away from Bruce’s grip.

“Quit complaining, Stark.” Natasha takes advantage of his trapped state and kisses him. He stutters before kissing her back. They’ve never kissed, not really. They’ve had sex with most of their team watching but this was always off limits. She was always the odd one out. She doesn’t want to be anymore. They could have had this eleven years ago and maybe it would have changed nothing but it would have been nice to have the memory. Or maybe it would have made what they chose that much worse.

“I think you broke him,” Bruce jokes when they part and Tony is speechless.

But only for a moment. “She should be so lucky.”

Bruce releases Tony who makes a beeline for Clint making grabby hands on the bed. Bruce simply drops his hands to his sides. He’s still in his cardigan and khakis as he lets Natasha inspect him from afar, cataloguing all the ways in which he is still human and all the ways in which he is more. His glasses remain, his physical restraint. His soft spots for Tony, for her, for Thor.

“Forgive me,” he says, quietly enough that the rest can’t hear and rush in to correct him. He looks sad;; aware that he left what could have been behind.

“You owed me nothing.” Natasha runs a hand up his forearm, tracing green veins. “Forgive me?”

He doesn’t ask for what. She might mean India, she might mean SHIELD, or Ultron, or the Accords, or Thanos, but she thinks her greatest trespass was preventing him from leaving that first Night in the Tower kitchen. For convincing him to entangle himself with this team against his better judgment. They’ve all paid for it in different ways but Bruce has given up more than most.

“You’re forgiven,” he says solemnly.

She feels lighter. She shouldn’t. She has so many sins and Bruce can absolve her of very few of them.

On the bed Tony is straddling Thor and Clint has finally managed to get Steve’s jeans off but not his underwear. Steve looks back towards them. “You two coming?”

“Might not be room.” Bruce loves a graceful exit and Tony’s borrowed mattress barely fits the present four men as it is.

Steve looks Bruce straight in the eye and then shoves all the pillows, the duvet, and eventually both Clint and Tony onto the floor.

“Not nice,” Clint grumbles, “if you wanted the hot viking all to yourself you just had to ask.”

“Plenty of me to go around,” Thor says with a touch of the grandiosity he had before.

“I can share him,” Steve says shortly and before anyone else can retort Steve pushes Thor off the bed too before dragging the rest of the furniture back a respectable distance, leaving a wide cleared area occupied by three mostly naked men and assorted bedding. It’s a practical solution if not necessarily a comfortable one.

Tony objects from where he’s propped up on his elbows. “The floor? I’m not in my twenties anymore, Cap. Carpet burn is no longer a fun recreational hazard.”

It’s the first time Steve and Tony have addressed each other tonight: a significant breach in protocol. They used to minimize their interactions to avoid stumbling onto unmarked landmines. A decade on and their relationship is well past minefield and well into nuclear wasteland. There’s nothing left to lose so they’re free to talk.

One of them has to be brave and this last time it’s Steve. He hesitates before reaching out and running his fingers through Tony’s silver streaked hair. A casual gesture if they were different people. Natasha wonders how long it’s been since they’ve touched outside necessity, how long Steve’s been waiting for his chance.

(His touch is so gentle. He’ll never leave Tony with bruises again. It won’t be a hard promise to keep: dead bodies don’t bleed.)

“You’re getting old, Tony,” Steve says softly and Natasha knows he’s feeling the weight of those lean years spent apart.

Tony bites back the obvious riposte in favour of the truth. “We all are.”

Time hasn’t been kind to any of them and they have been careless with her in turn. Thor is near immune, as now is Bruce. Steve ages slowly. They carry their age inside in dead friends and past deeds. Natasha, Clint, and Tony wear theirs in scars and lines and aches.

Tony leans every so slightly into Steve’s hand. “I’ve known you assholes a long time. No wonder I have grey hair.” It’s said lightly enough that no one takes offence. They’ve all learned what Tony says and what Tony means are different things.

“You missed Steve’s beard of sorrow,” Natasha teases as she runs a hand across Steve’s smooth jawline. He covers her hand with his own.

“It sounds awful,” Tony says.

“It was magnificent,” Thor opines.

“It was awesome, sorry Stark,” Clint agrees.

“A solid nine out of ten,” Bruce chimes in.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Tony huffs but there’s something sincere buried underneath. “If it was so great why didn’t you keep it? A beard of sorrow seems kind of appropriate these days.”

Natasha suspects Steve’s answer is some mixture of _Bucky_ and _America_ and _you_. He started growing it after Siberia. He got rid of it twenty-two days after the Snap when he finally accepted that the Dusted weren’t coming back - that _Tony_ wasn’t coming back - and then Carol performed a miracle and ruined it all.

“It itched,” Steve says instead, averting his eyes.

Tony lets him keep that secret. “Beauty is pain.”

He leans away and Natasha sees Steve swallow as the remnants of Tony slip through his fingers. Like dust, like ash. Steve chases ghosts. Bucky first and always. Howard. Peggy. Sam. Tony over the phone, then Tony lost in space, then Tony just upstate. Steve clings too desperately to the past and Tony let it go to chase the future a long time ago.

Natasha does not like to see a friend in pain, she places a hand over Steve’s steady heart. It grounds him. She isn’t one of his ghosts. Not quite yet. Keeping up with Steve is a whirlwind. He makes her want to be better even those times he is the worst of them. As much as he has been good to her, she has been good to him and that’s not something Natasha can say to many. Not even to everyone in this room.

Steve gives her a small smile and intertwines their hands and for a single instant Natasha lets herself pretend. There’s a reality out there where Steve is a little less loyal and she is a little more honest and when they share a bed it isn’t simply to keep each other warm. A place where they get to be messy liars and better people together.

But in this reality they are Avengers. They are two of six and instead of dancing there is fighting and instead of happily-ever-after there is failure. There is the breathlessness of exhilaration and the fluttering between ribs. There is effortless grace and then the inevitable crash.

(What the six of them share isn’t love, it’s _falling_.)

It still ends up fractured. Bruce isn’t prepared for much more than touching. Even with no monster to hide behind fifteen years cannot be undone. Clint contents himself trading barbs with Stark while remaining at Natasha side. The floor, as promised, is hard and somewhat poetically Tony is the one who ends up with rug burns on his knees. Thor melts hard, desperate and lonely and still godlike enough that Tony has to tap out and tag someone more durable (Steve) in. Natasha lets him go because he has never belonged to her. They have only ever belonged to this.

Tony says _watch them_ nodding toward Steve and Thor as he settles between her legs, facial hair brushing her sensitive thighs. Thor and Steve are pressed together, not a sliver of light between them as Steve wraps a hand around them both and tries to tell Thor to slow down, that they have all the time in the world.

(They don’t and Thor knows it. He’ll outlive them all and to live _forever_ with your mistakes is - )

Natasha’s breath hitches as Tony adds fingers. “Beautiful aren’t they?” he prompts, gazing at Steve and Thor. “Never thought I’d have a thing for Captain Flag and a Wagner Opera.” He’s teasing her deliberately, drawing it out. “Frightening redheads and nerdy physicists always did it for me though - “ He flinches and Natasha notices that Clint has rejoined the party, stroking a hand across Tony’s flank carefully avoiding sore spots. Tony turns back to her. “Your partner in crime however, is a complete and utter _dick_.”

“Aw shucks,” Clint says and Natasha can hear the smile in his voice. He eventually strokes something important enough that Tony’s rhythm falters and that’s unacceptable. Clint gives him a smug smile. “C’mon, Tony. The lady’s waiting for you.”

Tony murmurs something suspiciously close to _fuck you, Barton_ but his mouth is back on target. Steve and Thor fade into her periphery and Clint (always Clint) lays down beside her.

He brushes a lock of hair from her face. “I love you,” he says easily. It’s not a secret and it’s not the first time he’s said it. She doesn’t say it back. (Clint knows, of course he knows, and six days from now she’ll prove it to him.)

Natasha lets herself go, takes her eye off the ball and falls inward, lets herself live in her skin. She curls her hand deeper into Tony’s hair and pulls him close, her other hand wound around Clint’s wrist. Her orgasm hits like the perfect wave and she rides it out, Tony coaxing her through. She floats back to the gasping breaths of Thor trying to keep himself together where he’s leaning backwards into Bruce as Steve strokes him quicker. They’re being so gentle for all the power they possess. They don’t need to be but they can. So they are. Thor comes with a murmur, seemingly forgetting the impossibility of his situation as he surges forward and gets caught in Bruce’s embrace instead.

They’re all breathing heavily: from exertion, from lust, from awe.

“That was nice. Good. Nice,” Thor blathers as he struggles to extricate himself. “I could definitely use some gin.” He picks up his robe and throws it on in a flurry of activity the rest of them can only watch. For a moment Natasha thinks they’re all going to ignore the tears forming in his eyes. If Thor wants to leave the only one who could actually stop him is the man least likely to.

“Come back?” Bruce suggests instead, treading softly. He always knows exactly what to say.

Thor pauses with a hand on the doorknob. “Will do.”

Natasha calls his bluff. “I’ll have a beer. Since you’re coming back.”

“Make it two,” Clint adds, playing along. “Stark?”

“I quit,” Tony says in a passable facsimile of casual. “Solidarity. Pep couldn’t drink while pregnant.” It’s been years since then. Morgan is four.

“That’s... “ Steve hesitates, aware there’s no safe space for that sentence to land.

“...Good,” Thor finishes. “You drank too much for a mortal, Anthony, and it made you no happier. I, on the other hand, am Asgardian and am duty bound to retrieve drinks for the Lady.” He winks at her before dashing out the door. Tony stares after him and Natasha wonders how much of his own past self he sees reflected back.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Clint curses. “We should have sent him for lube too.”

That works as an icebreaker about as well as anything will. Tony snorts and Clint pounces. For a man who can’t shut up and a man who lives by observation it takes longer than Natasha would have thought for them to find their rhythm. Tony Stark once fearlessly propositioned five near-strangers in his kitchen, any one of whom could have crushed him in a instant. The caution’s here now, fuzzy around the edges. It’s in the watch he’s still wearing around his left wrist that’s expensive and armed, and in the way he guards his chest even if it no longer houses the arc reactor.

Clint notices. It’s what he does. He is methodical in his catalogue of what works and what doesn’t and when Steve draws a heavy breath to her left Natasha wonders if he’s admiring the skillful deduction or the naked skin. Clint is still the stronger of the pair of them and eventually bullies Tony into sitting on the edge of the bed before settling himself between Stark’s knees. Tony gets the high ground, gets his hands free. The perfect ploy is one where the mark never realizes anything has happened at all.

“God, your haircut is atrocious,” Tony says as he runs his hand through Clint’s hair.

“Keep it up, Stark,” Clint dares before he starts in earnest.

“Oh, _fuck yes -_ ”

It’s not nearly as pornographic as it sounds. From Natasha’s angle there is nothing X-rated on display; it’s all implied by the motion of bodies and the fluttering of eyelids. It’s not a performance for an audience. It doesn’t stop her watching. There’s a slight asymmetry in the muscles of Clint’s back from decades of drawing back a bow. The few scars he has were picked up years before he worked for SHIELD in a circus tent run by a madman. These days Clint is too good at what he does to be physically marred by the lives he’s taken so he has found a substitute. He’s drawn the darkness of his soul onto his skin for all to see. The elaborate tattoo winds up his right arm and around his collarbone, strangling him. It’s beautiful.

Steve’s watching too but the expression is intent. He traces Tony’s hurts from afar: the long arc across his abdomen, the spiderweb at his sternum, the darkening bruises Thor dug into his haunches, and the twin skinned knees. But look is all Steve does. He won’t touch and he won’t trust himself to get closer without trying.

(He’ll get his chance once Tony is dead. When he pries metal off a half-burnt corpse and marvels at how he let this last opportunity pass him by. _Too late, always too late_.)

“They’re both just showing off,” Natasha says and Steve’s attention instantly refocuses on her. “Let’s give them a run for their money.” She tugs him down to the floor and muscle memory takes over from there.

At some point Thor does return with the promised beers though they remain unopened. Tony eventually slumps down back onto the harshly disparaged floor to keep him company. Clint’s loyal to a fault and doesn’t get off at all though not for lack of offers, and for the man who started all this tonight that’s almost an insult. They manage to make enough room for Bruce who is still mostly clothed.

Tony is asleep by the time Natasha comes a second time, Clint is being used as a pillow. Thor watches her and Steve with interest but his silence speaks to how tired he is too. Bruce putters around the room grabbing an assemblage of couch cushions and quilts to loosely drape around everyone. Steve is silent when he stiffens a moment later, hands solid around her hips but miles from harm. He rests his forehead on her breastbone to catch his breath, to catch himself.

“Better with an audience?” she whispers.

Steve answers like he hasn’t spoken in years. “Better with this one.”

(Steve gave himself to this team on a dare long ago.)

The six of them still don’t fit. They arrange themselves across the limited space like the world’s worst Tetris pieces. Bruce has to lie diagonally across the floor to stretch out and seeing Tony sleep is novel enough no one wants to disturb him. Everyone else is a tangle of feet and bargaining in a bid to get the best blankets and avoid the most egregious wet spots.

It’s a long way from the Tower kitchen. The wrong people are sober and they all know each other too well in ways they’d have preferred to keep hidden. They have few illusions about what this is and fewer still about who they’ve become. They’ve spent a decade enmeshed and made out like bandits with each others’ flaws. Thor ends up with Tony’s alcoholism and existential despair. Clint got Bruce’s wrath and wandering exile. Steve gets Natasha’s dishonesty and Thor’s lost brother. Bruce gets Thor’s alienation and recklessness. Tony gets Steve’s survivor’s guilt and her paranoia. She gets loneliness and a desperate yearning for the past.

There are no lights outside the Compound windows, there is no twinkling city below, just the endless night. Without the glow of the arc reactor the room is pitch black. It’s not frightening. In the dark it’s easy to pretend they exist out of time. There has to be a word in some language for the longing for things you never had. The nostalgic twinge for memories you only wished you had lived. The stories you told yourself that were never quite true. A word for an _almost_ that never materialized.

Natasha doesn’t remember what it is. Instead, she sleeps.

* * *

They are, eleven years on, still themselves.

Tony doesn’t last through the night. He extricates himself from Bruce’s grip, dresses silently and slips away. He looks back only once, oblivious to blue eyes tracking him. Steve doesn’t follow. He stays wrapped around Clint, awake and vigilant like if he closes his eyes any one of them could turn to dust in his fingers. Clint shivers in the centre, the heat of Thor and Steve a poor substitute for the familiarity of Laura, for the irreplaceable warmth he had and lost. Thor will stumble out of bed at dawn to soothe his emergent hangover. He’ll down three warm beers, a pick-me-up to convince himself to push through another day. Bruce will be quieter about his withdrawal, a discreet escape well beyond his reach.

Natasha will wonder why she was such a fool to think they’d be different. Why she wasted the hours they were all together sleeping instead of making the seconds count. She should have stopped Tony leaving. She should have settled Clint and reassured Steve. She should have poured Thor’s beers down the drain and made sure Bruce wasn’t left alone. But she didn’t because she is, to the first and last, herself too.

So she watches them splinter along faultlines familiar and not, and spiral outward, never to intersect again.

* * *

On her last night in the universe she is witness to one final miracle. Steve doesn’t come to bed and it takes a moment for Natasha’s rusted memory to recognize the last bit of the pattern unravelling.

She finds the two of them in the empty situation room. Through the sliver in the door she can see Tony leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on a work table, mug in hand. Steve is standing opposite and staring down, leaning casually so Stark’s ankles bump into his torso. They’re not doing anything exciting, just talking too quietly for her to parse. She follows Stark’s lilting cadence and Steve’s answering deadpan as Tony laughs softly. Steve takes advantage of his distraction to smile quickly like he’s still unsure if it’s allowed.

She watches them for a long time, letting their voices flow over and through her, waiting for revelation. The rest of the team always assumed they’d be passionate, angry. Maybe they were and here in the After the world has finally ground them into shapes that fit. There’s no skin, no bruises, no arguments. It’s a conversation between friends: a Pyrrhic victory on the ashes of the apocalypse.

Natasha makes no noise but two heads swing towards her in unison anyway: one light, one dark, in perfect symmetry and for a moment she thinks: _It’s not too late._ For the two of them. For _all_ of them.

( _It **is**_ though. They were given eleven years and wasted all but a handful of them. Thor will live millennia yet, Bruce has a hundred years left. Steve has fewer than he thinks and not in the right order. Clint has a lifetime. Tony has two days. She is gone tomorrow.)

To beg for more time is -

* * *

She never thought she’d be the one to leave first. She was told that every person dies alone but like many things she was taught, this is untrue. She may not die _Together_ but she doesn’t die alone.

It’s okay.

Or rather, it will be.

_To beg for more time is like fighting_

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It’s Natasha who kills the Avengers. They die with her.

(They are reborn without.)

Tony kills Thanos and his army. He dies in trade.

(And his is not a wasted life.)

Lose your soul. Lose your heart.

_Ashes to ashes,_

_Dust to dust._

* * *

* * *

This is _whatever it takes:_

A mother for reality.

A soul for a soul.

Your best friend for a debt.

An arm for resurrection.

A life for the universe.

Your future for a dance.

(Your future for the chance to go around again. To make the ghosts live and love and _feel_ a second time even if you can’t interfere for fear of collapsing the timeline. You traded all your tomorrows for yesterdays and it’s as selfish as they always told you it was. For a man who’s always too late, this time you arrive early. You’ll wait fifty years for six people to coalesce in a single moment of perfection even knowing the decline that is to come. The Avengers were a trainwreck and a masterpiece and you wouldn’t change them for the world.)

The Man Out of Time becomes the Man with Too Much.

It’s not supposed to be a tragedy.

* * *

Drink then to dead sailors who never came home: to Gamora (a sister) and Loki (a brother). To Heimdall of Asgard who had lived millennia and to Vision of Earth who was brand new. To Natalia Alianova Romanova and Anthony Edward Stark who first crossed paths a long time ago and who die apart but not alone. Drink to the living left behind.

The End isn’t the ending. The curtain never falls.

What matters is the idea perseveres, the ship sails on: a new Captain at the helm, a new First Mate, a new Steersman, Navigator, Gunman, Lookout -

(The Avengers only ever begin in the After: six strangers in black at a lakeside funeral as the sunlight filters through the grey sky like smoke.)

Part of the journey is the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story started as two contrasting OT6 scenes: one at the beginning of their relationship and one at the end, hence why Ch.1 and 5 mirror each other. I worked out a lot of my personal feelings about Endgame and the Avengers plot line in general in this story. They really are a tragedy dressed up as a victory. I'm okay with Nat and Tony's deaths but Steve's ending is... less of a hit with me. 
> 
> _Charybdis_ is the name of the whirlpool from the Odyssey. Scylla is the monster opposite it on the other side of the strait. To get his ship through Odysseus has to choose between them. Scylla eats some of your crew as you pass but Charybdis sinks your whole ship. The Avengers chose poorly the first time. I think I love them for that.
> 
> Comments are welcome!


End file.
